The Clinic

Fridays here at Emmanuel begin with BIG CIRCLE.  Big circle is where all the children at Emmanuel come together to sing praises to God and to have their morning devotion.  Max led today's devotion and the boys were called to read their scripture that they had memorized.  Rather than memorizing just a verse or two, these children memorize an entire chapter of the Bible and then recite it at circle.  It's just AMAZING!...and the boys have such rhythm to what they're reciting, it's very neat!  I didn't realize that my camera battery was dead until I actually got to circle, which was kind of a "bummer".

We headed to the little girls house next to serve breakfast and do dishes.  After doing dishes, Ana Yanci and Maria asked us if we'd help them go out into the woods in search of wood for cooking the rest of the day.  Maria grabbed the machete and we headed out.  Kimberly was in her sandals and found out (for the first time here) what it's like for ants to bite you, since she stepped on an ant hill as she was piling the wood into her arms and her shoe fell off.  On our way back, we saw that Zue was with the girls in her kitchen looking for wood too!

When I got back to the volunteer house, it was pretty much time to head to the clinic.  This is my first time at the clinic this year, so it wasn't too terribly bad (as opposed to the last 2 years).  Anothing nice thing this year is that the shifts are split up into 1.5 hours shifts, instead of the typical 3+ hour shifts in past years.  It really does make time go fast.  Little Joche is in the clinic with stitches in his eye, so we just have to make sure that he doesn't touch his eye.  I finished up watching the video with him that the previous volunteer had put in, then we headed out to the yard out front to get on the swings.  After swinging for a bit, we headed back to the clinic where we colored some pictures of trees & alligators - and then that was pretty much it for my shift!

I came back to the house and saw that Andres had returned the computer (which he borrowed overnight to update his blog), so I did my morning devotion and updated my blog.  When I was finished with that, it was lunch time; so we did the typical serving lunch & washing dishes and then Kimberly & I headed back to the house to cool down for just a bit before heading to the craft house.  Katja would like us to start taking the special needs kids to the craft house to do a craft with them.  Here's the thing: I'm NOT very creative, so coming up with art projects is close to impossible for me.  I just wanted to take inventory of what's in there, and I'll be busy all weekend googling different art projects for the kids.  This will definitely be a challenge for me this year.

We headed back to the little girls house for the ensenanza (afternoon Bible study) and a team came to do that with the girls.  They weren't the most organized, so unfortunately the girls were WIRED for the rest of the evning, stretching Esperanza, Danis, Kimberly, my and all the older girls who were in charge of them to the limit.  It was a rough evening then of baths and supper, after the bible study.

I needed to just relax with "no one" around, but there were a bunch of girls in the volunteer house when we had finished with the little girls, so I headed down to the carnival that the Maryland team was putting on (I know, doesn't sound really relaxing, right?).  Actually the soccer field just cleared out and Andres was sitting on one end "vegging" too...so I sat next to him and we chatted for 30-45 minutes while just relaxing from the masses of children over the past week.  We could hear their voices from inside the gymnasium, so they weren't too far off.  When the medium girls came out, I spent the rest of the evening sitting next to Michele.  She's one of the girls I cared for my first year here (5 years ago).  Those girls are still precious to me today!

When the carnival ended and the girls were whisked away back to their house, I headed back to the volunteer house.  The male volunteers had a bonfire, so the younger females went over to chat...I decided to stay back in the house with Zue and Brandy and just chat about "girl things".  We were up pretty late, 10pm here (11pm WI time)...that's pretty late for me when I usually get up at 4:30am, so it wasn't to difficult to fall asleep at the end of the night.