Sometimes, its hard to justify 'getting away' and staying in a hotel thirty minutes from your house, when there are people right up the street who barely earn enough money to stay in their own house, much less go someplace else. We wonder sometimes why our roles aren't reversed - why are we the ones who have the option of leaving real life behind for even just a few hours? And so I want to preface this post by saying that we are extremely thankful that we had the opportunity to get away last night, because we know its a privilege that not everyone has.
That said, life is very different for us here than it was back at home, in the sense that we rarely, rarely travel. At home, we were traveling most weekends, and life was anything but routine. Here, its very easy to get burnt out with the fairly predictable day-to-day and week-to-week activities, and with being the same place day after day, weekend after weekend. Sometimes it's easy to feel a little trapped. And so sometimes, we need an evening out together like we had last night, and just a little bit of change of pace. And Hotel Jericó, a hotel on the edge of Zamora, was the perfect night away and retreat for us. We came back feeling so rested and refreshed, and so much more ready to tackle life.
It was actually all a surprise for me; last night after church, Grant told me to eat just enough that I would feel good on the way to Zamora, and that we were going to head to Domino's for pizza. Yum. That stuff is so good. But then he added, "and pack your bags, because we aren't coming home until tomorrow". It was a fun surprise that definitely served two purposes - making my birthday (which isn't for another week and a half) special, and offering us a chance to re-connect and relax.
So we drove into Zamora, went to Domino's, and then to Hotel Jericó. We just started reading and studying the book Love & Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs (thanks, Brent & Janelle!). It's a book about the husband/wife relationship (her need for love, his need for respect, as you might guess) and although we just started, we are already learning a lot! So last night was a great opportunity to discuss that together and talk about our marriage. We got to bed pretty late, but we slept really good - in a king size bed! It seemed bigger to me than any king size bed I've slept in before. We had a queen at home, but here we have a double, which was completely fine until I got pregnant. It was really nice to have a little extra space to spread out and toss and turn. :) The other thing that was there was a mirror in which I could see my stomach. We don't have a full length mirror, just bathroom mirrors and stuff, and so I hadn't really seen what I looked like. And as it turns out, I looked very... pregnant. Much more so than I thought. I've still been trying to squeeze into my polos that I wear for uniform at school, but no more of that after I saw how much my stomach sticks out. Grant found the whole thing pretty entertaining; he has really enjoyed the freedom to tell me that I'm fat, but I don't think I quite realized how right he was. Anyway, so I spent a good fifteen minutes exclaiming over that. (Note from Grant: We proofread each other posts before they go out to the world, and while I was proofreading this, I just felt the need to add that I'm not sure where Hannah came up with 15 minutes. She's still exclaiming.)
This morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast - they had a buffet that was kind of half American, half Mexican - with everything from meat and salsa combinations to waffles and fruit. And of course, fresh-squeezed orange juice. We also swam a little bit in the outdoor pool - I'm not sure if I've ever swam in an outdoor pool in October-almost-November! It was a little chilly, but could have been a lot worse. We headed home shortly after noon, so thankful for the time we had away just to be together.
At the hotel
Part of the front
We had invited a couple from church over for a 3 p.m. lunch but something came up and they couldn't make it. We also a lot of times do something with Matt & Ruth on Friday nights but that didn't work out this evening either, so we suddenly ended up with way more extra time on our hands than we thought we had. Grant was like, "well, usually when this happens, I would suggest we have a date night or something, but... we just did!" So we actually ended up biking to El Limón, a little town just a couple miles away and visiting a lady from church and her daughter. We just stopped in and chatted for a few minutes, not very long, but it was good to see them and get to know them a little bit better.
And now we're home and got to skype with Grant's family and the Zehr cousins (two separate sessions, obviously), both of which we really enjoyed. We're really blessed to have the options we do to stay connected with our families.
And so we had a wonderful retreat, and feel very blessed.
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