Top Secret - Alto Secreto

As usual, the morning began with cutting veggies.  I'm still waiting to get a photo of pataste for you, but once again there was none.  Breakfast consisted of oatmeal, granola and soda crackers in warm chocolate milk.  When resources are limited, you need to be creative down here.  We've had this breakfast before, but thought I'd go into detail for you who are reading and have never been exposed to an orphanage in a 3rd world country.  After breakfast I washed the dishes and then went into the pavilion with the kiddos.  A group of people arrived to sing songs for the children and to give them hand-made coloring story books about the Creation.  At the end of their visit, they gave the children each a toy.

The toddlers sitting nicely listening to the group sings worship songs

There's a teenage mom at this house, named Zelenes, who has caught my attention.  She keeps to herself and the other day Laurie's two daughters (Rachel and Rebekah) mentioned that she was the only one they were "afraid" to approach.  When I asked why, they said that she was so tall, so big and walked around like she had a chip on her shoulder.  I decided to watch her from a distance for a while.  She's very quiet and doesn't engage much in conversation.  I talked to her a bit and let her know what Rachel and Rebekah had said.  She said that she only had 3 close friends and didn't really like to be around big crowds and engaged in a lot of conversations.  That just wasn't her personality.  Her son, Jefferson, seems to cling to her and cries when he can see her working in the yard but can't be by her.  She is tall for a Honduran, probably around 5'8".  I'll be keeping my eyes on her during her last week here. 

Zelenes with her son Jefferson on left and Carla's son, Isai on right

Zelenes working with 4 toddlers on their Creation coloring books.

This afternoon I went to the school and Karen was actually able to hold Spanish class.  We began the class by doing a dictation (we'd probably call it a spelling pre-quiz).  Karen asked me to come up with 15 words from the book they were reading out of to write down as their pre-quiz.  The words should have the letters 'b or v', and 's or c', which are letters that the children often confuse with each other since many times they can sound the same.  The book they're reading from is called 'Alto Secreto' (entitled Top Secret in English).  I was excited when I saw this because I read this book with my students last year, so I was already familiar with the story.  After the dictation, the students had to write 10 words each that began with the letters b, v, d, s, and c.  It was amazing how many words they got incorrect.  Karen has a lot of work ahead of her!

When I headed back to the Toddler House, Nicole was back from her doctor appointment.  She had a scope done today, I'm guessing in Tegucigalpa to see why she's losing so much weight.  She came running to me right away as soon as she saw me come up the walkway to the park.  I hope and pray that they find how to treat her fast moving weight loss.  Since I had class with Karen in the afternoon, I gathered the kiddos from the park and brought them back for supper and then to get showered (dishes done) and put to bed.

We had church last night and Pastor Francisco (from the California group) taught the sermon.  He is originally from Mexico but came to the States in his teen years.  He's been coming to Honduras for the past 3-4 years and I always enjoy listening to him because since he has a Mexican accent...he is SO much easier for me to understand - and I almost feel like I am "home" (as far as Spanish goes), having lived in Mexico and being more accustomed to their accent and entonation.  

After church, Alina and I headed back to our room because we were very exhausted.  I completed one word search while she read a chapter in her Left Behind series book, then we headed to bed.