The Chick Magnet

We woke up this morning around 2am to some very hard rains...so the 2-3 weeks of "nice weather" (AKA non-rain) are now behind us.  I fell back asleep and woke up at my usual 4am time, showered, dressed, had my devotions and caught up with my blog.  When I opened the door to outside, I saw a turtle scooting across the front of our yard.  The turtles are usually down by the water pond resting on a cement slab, so I thought I'd better get my camera out because I had never seen them up this far away from the water.  The rain must've got it confused.

Our guest this morning

We didn't need to get to the Toddler House until a little bit later because they were out of vegetables, so instead of arriving at 6am, we got there about 6:30am.  It generally takes the 5 of us about an hour to peel and cut veggies.  The knives aren't all that sharp.  Alina and I were greeted by RosaLinda and Yessi, who were wearing the Green Bay Packer shirts we had given them (given to me to take down this way by a coworker).  I've never seen Packer shirts down here, which would probably make sense since I believe I'm the only volunteer yet from Wisconsin who's been at Emmanuel.  Hopefully that will change now in the future.  But if any of you have Packer clothing you'd like to equip these children with, please feel free to either send it to me or to send it down to Dr. Reynolds in TN (donation information is on the Orphanage Emmanuel website).

Left to Right: RosaLinda (China), Alina, and Yessi with probably the 1st two Packer shirts ever at Emmanuel

After playtime in both the pavilion and the park, we decided to take the kiddos on a walk to the park in front of the orphanage.  Alina played freeze tag with the teen moms while I chatted with the girl in charge.  Glinda, the lady from town who is hired to watch over the toddlers during the day, was in Tegucigalpa getting an ultrasound.  She's 5 and 1/2 months pregnant and hadn't felt the baby move in a couple of days and had been having some rare back pains.  The teen moms are still home from school due to Glinda's phone still being missing.  Little Jesus was wearing the cutest shirt today, so I just had to get a picture...which sums up his personality SO much!

Jesus in his "Chick Magnet" shirt

After lunch Alina and I headed to the school to work with Karen in her Spanish classes.  She brought in six 3rd graders to read from the same book as the 4th graders read from yesterday - Alto Secreto.  Two of the students struggled a little bit through the reading, but the other 4 were not able to read at all (one of the boys was 14 years old).  Alina was very hesitant to read with them out loud since she really doesn't understand what she's reading, however when Karen and I noticed that the other 4 students couldn't even read, I explained to Alina that they were going to need a LOT of work one-on-one, so I really needed her to work with the first two who could read a little...and for each one of them read a paragraph at a time, correcting each other as needed.  By the end of the class, her group had gotten through the entire chapter and she felt a little more confident about it.

Alina reading aloud with the 3rd graders in Spanish

 When we got to the Toddler House it was time to serve supper and prepare for the night-time routine.  A little 7-year-old (who I think is a Latina Laurel look-alike) named Saidy helped me wash the dishes.  She said it was the first time ever that she washed dishes.  I let the cook, Mirna, know that now that Saidy has experience, whenever she feels short-handed she should just grab Saidy to do the work and help her out!

Juliet and Veronica Diaz opened the souvenir gift shop this evening, so Alina and I headed that way to check out what they had.  I got a few things to take back to the States and Alina got a couple of gifts for some girls here.  We got back to our room quite a bit later than normal, so headed to bed right away.