August 9th - A Minute to Call Home

This morning I was at the clinic from 6:30-9:30am. After that, Leigh & I ran to town. Due to the demands of the clinic, I have not yet had a chance to get to town (for phone cards, groceries, etc) since our arrival on the 1st of August. My plan was to stop at the internet café to type up my blog, but Leigh suggested that I use her laptop back at the dorm when I'm not in the clinic rather than using time in town to catch up. That sounded good to me!

We first stopped at the TIGO store. TIGO is probably the main cell phone carrier down here. My Verizon phone doesn't work down here and even if it would, TIGO offers much better rates than Verizon ever could to call home. I bought 3 of the $100 Lempira cards, planning to give one card to Andrés and the other two should allow me to call home multiple times to chat with my 3 precious children left behind: Alina (7 yrs), Noah (5 yrs), and Kaylyn (2 yrs); and of course my AWESOME husband Bob who allows me to come down here for such a length of time while he watches the kids who are still too young to come down & help. I am also thankful that I have sisters, parents, aunts, cousins, and other family close-by, to help with the kids while I'm down here!

Lempiras is the currency of Honduras and 1 U.S. dollar will yield about 18-19 Lemps in exchange (so I purchased $15 worth of minutes to the States which should be MORE than enough to get us through this week & next). Leigh also offered to buy our extra unused minutes before we head back if we had any, but I'll probably take them with me to San Pedro Sula so I can maintain contact with Blanca & Luis (from the bed & breakfast we stay at before heading home) and also to make some last minute phone calls home the night before our arrival back to the States.

We headed to the supermarket next. Generally I've eaten with the little girls the last 2 years, but have found it difficult this trip because of the clinic needs. The hours I'm in the clinic usually run right through the eating times of the girls, so I think I've only been over there to eat twice now. It's best to have some food "on hand". This supermarket is nothing like our Super-Walmarts back in the States. It's even smaller than a small local supermarket back in the States, but since it's bigger than the other stores in Guaimaca...it is THE supermarket. I bought some spaghetti noodles and some sauce (which comes in packets rather than a glass jar or can), some Honduran cheese (which is similar to the cheese that our old babysitter Patti brings us from El Salvador), 4 boxes (yes, BOXES) of milk, and some orange juice. We stopped at Glenda's small stand on the way back to Emmanuel for tomatoes, eggs & onions. There is an avocado tree next to our volunteer dorm, so I'll try to make some guacamole at some point for everyone.

Katja held a volunteer meeting at 4:30. Rachel and Malorie (two long-term volunteers) made donuts for the meeting and brought sodas. The focus of the meeting turned to the clinic demands. Katja mentioned that there was a couple just arriving as we met who were going to be at Emmanuel during the week "on vacation", but that the husband, David, was a paramedic. If it were a vacation, I really didn't want to ask him to do it (who wants to work on vacation, right?)...but noticing Leigh & my exhaustion, she called and asked David to help out at the clinic from 6:30am - 12:30pm the next day - just as he was bringing his suitcases in to where they were about to stay. He agreed to be there.

After the meeting, I hurried home to call my kids & was excited to hear from each one. Kaylyn said "hello" but the next thing out of her mouth was "When are you coming home?" Did she come up with that one, or was that Bob helping her to talk in the phone...I'm not sure. I let her know that I'd absolutely love it if she was there at the airport when I flew home in 2 weeks. I got to talk to Noah and Alina as well before talking to Bob & saying "good-nights" to all. Although the bus rides back to San Pedro Sula will be torture on me ('cuz they're all I'll think about, which will make me miss them more), the blessing of Emmanuel is that each year I come, I am SO NEEDED and they fill my hours - giving me little time to dwell on having left the rest of my family back home.

I spent the night at the clinic (6:30pm - 6:30am) and it was a long night. Two toddlers were rushed in to the clinic about 9:30 with Karelia. They had high fevers and she needed to check them out. With all of the lights going on in that room & all of the commotion, most of the children who were there with chicken pox woke up and it took them quite a while to get settled back to sleep. I was more appreciative of David agreeing to be in at 6:30am so that I could get some rest the next day!