The Toddler House

So now rather than team members, Alina and I are volunteers.  The roles are very different, although it may be too much to get in to here.  Our assignment this year is at the Toddler House since they had so many volunteers from there leave this weekend.  For the past 6 years I've been at the Little Girls House, and in all honesty the 2 houses I least cared to be at were the Baby House and the Toddler House (closely followed by the Power Toddlers)...I'm just not a baby person.  But God does have a sense of humor.

Alina and I arrived to the Toddler House this morning at 6:15 (Andi's recommended time) to find a mother and her 2 daughters cutting vegetables in the kitchen.  They arrived as a family of 5 on Thursday evening and were also assigned to the toddler house.  The mom's name is Laurie and the daughters are Rachel and Rebekah.  It took about an hour to cut all the veggies for the house and then we served breakfast.  When breakfast was finished, I walked with the teen moms to the school to talk to Vero Castro and Karen about assisting in Karen's teaching of the Spanish classes to 3rd-5th grade.  These are pull-out remedial classes for children who may not yet know how to read, write, or even keep their letters straight (like switching a b for a d, or a p for a q).  Karen let me know that she has classes on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 1:00-2:30, so we decided that I'd meet up with her on Wednesday for her class.

Since we are now in the hotel, we need to either eat with the children or provide our own meals.  In the past, there have been times when food ran out at the children's houses, so we didn't eat.  Here at Emmanuel, Mondays and Thursdays are now the designated days for volunteers to go in to town if they are in need of groceries.  Since I wanted to get a few items to have on hand "just in case", Alina and I headed in to town with Laurie for some groceries.  We purchased bread, juice, milk, 3 meals of pasta with sauce, an instant ramen meal, green beans, potatoes, avocadoes, onions, tomatoes, banana bread, margarine (since butter is extremely rare down here), and snacks like chips and crackers and cookies.  We stopped on the way back to visit Glenda who has her own veggie stand.  I've gotten to know her more and more over the past 7 years and she always has a smile on her face.  We bought some veggies from her and also 2 charamuscas, which are basically homemade fruit popsicles in a bag.

We returned to Emmanuel about 2pm, put the groceries away and then headed right back to the Toddler House since they would be just waking up from their nap.  We let them play for an hour, fed them supper and then Alina, Laurie, and her daughters worked to shower them while I washed the supper dishes.  After showers and dishes are done, we are free to go as they settle down for the night, about 5pm.  Keep in mind that it gets pretty dark by 6pm here.  Alina and I usually head to bed about 7pm so that we can be up early.