August 8th - Helping the Little Girls

On Fridays, all of the children get together for their big circle. You can see a video of this at Orphanage Emmanuel's website. This morning, the various age groups went up to the center to recite their bible verses. Then Merethe led the children in a devotion, followed by the children singing praises to God. After circle, I went back to the volunteer house to have breakfast, work on the puzzle, and journal a little bit before heading off to the storage room. I have to wait until the children are in their classes, so that I am not a distraction to the school - or the children would be hovering around me and arrive late to class. They SO crave attention.

Todd sat in the storage room keeping me company. Robert had assigned him to gather email addresses of various colleges, so that he can look for potential teachers willing to donate a year to come down and teach at their school. He played Spanish Christian songs on his computer while we worked - introducing me to various artists. It took an hour to fill a rubbermaid container with pencils. The pencils were in cardboard boxes and some of the boxes had already been the victims of termites.

I came down to the internet cafe at about 11:00am to update 2 days worth of journaling since the internet was down yesterday, then went with Esti to the restaurant for another taco de pollo. This time, instead of the avocado, Verónica put lettuce with shredded Honduran cheese on it. It was still good - although I'd rather have the slice of avocado.

After lunch I went back to the storage room to continue working on filling a second, bigger rubbermaid with pencils. I worked until 3:00pm before heading back to the volunteer house. Since the kids eat supper at about 3:30 and I wasn't hungry yet, I listened to a praise and worship CD to relax. When I went through all of the songs I was familiar with, I headed to the young/medium girls eating hall, hoping they would be close to finishing their food. I noticed some young girls were standing in a line while eating their food. When I asked the older girls in charge, they had told me these girls were goofing around during the devotion, prayer and song-time before supper; so their punishment was to stand while eating.

Doris came over to chat with me a bit and when the younger girls were finished eating, she had to clean the eating hall and kitchen area. I offered to help, but Merethe said that Doris and 2 other girls were cleaning as an "extra" chore tonight since they did not memorize their scriptures for this morning's circle. She mentioned that if I'd like to help her bathe the children that she was in charge of and help them to brush their teeth, I was welcome to do so. In addition to being the high school principal, she is in charge of 64 young girls. Although Merethe said volunteers generally don't help with this (because they usually feel uncomfortable doing this type of work), for me it was a BLAST! I put toothpaste on their toothbrushes for them (so they didn't squirt too much on) and there were girls Alina's size running around everywhere...waiting to shower, waiting to get clothes on for the night, waiting for toothpaste, or waiting to get their hair brushed. The girls finally started to settle down to watch a movie together and Merethe mentioned that it was about to pour, so although I had planned to watch the movie, I ran back to the volunteer house before the hard rain came down.

The girls at the volunteer house (Esti, Anita, Sheila, Carolyn & Lindsey) got out a game of Scattergories and we all played. Sheila ended up winning - she is a very quick and original thinker! After the game, I spent time on my journal, watched "Sweet Home Alabama" with Lindsey, and then headed for bed.