Plantain Tacos?

This morning during our devotions time together, Bob and I had a visitor...a gecko.  When devotions were over, the little gecko was still in the same position, not 3 feet away from me.  We believe that it was cold and not willing to move a lot.  So Bob gently picked it up to show the others before finding a safe, warm spot for it.  I spent a little time updating this blog and when I was ready to shut down the technology, a rainbow appeared!  What a blessing!!!

We headed to breakfast and then the women went off to measure the girls in the "grandes" yard.  My job was to fill out blank post-its with the words: Shoe, Height, Weight, Shirt, Pants, Bust, Waist & Hips.  The post-its then went to the next person who wrote down the name of the girl at the top.  Then it was the girl's job to head to the different measuring stations to get all of the measurements listed above.  When the post-it was completely filled out, she handed it to another girl who collected all of the measurements which will be put into an Excel list for sponsors to see exactly what size is needed if they choose to buy them clothing or shoes for Christmas.  This list is usually posted in October sometime.

We tried to hurry through measuring the girls because there was a huge soccer game at Emmanuel for both the girls and the boys.  There was a girls' team and a boys' team coming from in town to play against them and the winner would move on to the next town.  For those of you in to sports, I would compare this to the play-offs.  Our girls won, 7-0, but the boys lost 1-2...I guess it was a good game for the boys that really came down to the wire.  We missed the second half because it was lunch time for us and our times for meals are pretty much right on.

For lunch we had stuff plantains.  We grabbed a whole fried plantain, cut a slice from one end to the other and then stuffed it with ground beef and cabbage and a few other items (like a taco, only with the plantain as the shell).  It was the first time I've ever had these.

After lunch we headed to the farm for activity day with the medium boys.  We heard that last year the volunteers were ready to call it quits just about 1/2 hour into the activities with them because they were SO naughty.  I guess the water balloon station was the worst and they just grabbed the balloons and chucked them at each other, disregarding any instructions on how to play the actual game.  Guess who Joanne put in charge of the water balloon game???...yours truly.  Alina did face-painting and Bob helped me with the water balloons.  At the end of the night I received another yellow bead (for leadership) from Bob for "rocking the water balloon game" (his words, not mine).  They boys were SUPER good when they came my way, although I think it helped that many of them already knew me from school last year when they were my students...so there was a level of respect there.  After each group rotated through all of the activities, we fed the boys hot dogs for lunch and gave them prizes before they took off.  Below is Lane's face...the Batman fanatic.

After the medium boys activities, we headed back to the team house for a break before supper.  Although the team all headed back, I stopped in the big girls' yard and shared time with Doris.  We had a very good chat.  After supper, Juliet & Veronica (our cooks) opened up the Souvenir shop.  I was surprised to see that they take credit cards this year.  Perhaps after Bob leaves, I'll go SWIPE CRAZY.

This is a picture of this evening's team meeting.

I've figured out the bead system.  We have an opportunity to give a bead to anyone in our group and explain why we're giving them this bead.  The beads are different colors: Red, Green, White, Blue, and Yellow, and have different representations.  Red is for an act of love, Green is for doing something outside of one's comfort zone, White is for spreading joy, Blue is for an act of humility, and Yellow is for an act of leadership.  So I now have 2 yellow beads.  This is strange because the true me never wanted to be a leader.  I have taken the spiritual gifts test (95 questions) and leadership is NOT anywhere near close to the top of the list.  I love that Joanne is the leader of this group!

After our team meeting, Kelsey & Bekah led a small devotional time with singing.  I was very excited to see Carlos singing with them and asked if he'd be singing in church tomorrow.  He is shy and shook his head, but once Kelsey and Bekah heard me, they begged him to sing with them and he agreed.  We'll see how it goes!

Big Circle

This morning we woke up and headed to Big Circle at 6am.  I've posted pictures in the past of big circle, but for those who may be reading this blog for the first time, this is where all 534 children of the orphanage come together to sing praises to God and have devotional time.  Big Circle only happens on Fridays, and every other day a little circle is done, which consists of smaller circles outside each of the dorm houses at the orphanage.  For example, there would be a large girls circle outside of their house, a medium girls circle outside of theirs, a small girls circle outside of theirs, and the same for the boys and toddlers.  Big Circle is an opportunity for all to be together and may be the only opportunity for some siblings to see each other.  The toddlers and babies were not present today.

Kelsey and her mom had seen a bunch of T-Shirts at their church which had a big "Orphans No More" caption on them.  They had asked if they could have the t-shirts to ship to the orphanage a few months back and we saw that the little girls (that I've worked with over the years) were wearing them to Big Circle!  Here is a picture (from a distance) of how that looked:

After Big Circle we had breakfast and got briefed for the day.  We split up into different teams - some of the women went to sizing & measuring of the infants and toddlers, I stayed back with a small groups to cut out crafts that were going to be used in the afternoon devotions with the small girls & small boys and to sort through clothing that was going to be donated to the children, and the men went to work on filling in the greenhouse so that cement could be laid next week.  When we finished cutting out the crafts and sorting the clothing, I took the girls with me on a tour of the orphanage.  We passed by the big girls yard, the gymnasium, the girls' volunteer house, the school, the church, the main office, staff housing, the farm, and when we came to the greenhouse we saw the men hard at work (and VERY sweaty), so I took a picture of that:

Over by the greenhouse is a tilapia farm and more staff housing.  We came around the back and saw the dental clinic and the power toddlers house and then the girls decided to take the "longer" route back to the team house, which passed by the babies and toddler houses.  As we went into the baby house, I saw Brandy so introduced her to Kelsey and Bekah.  She let me know that she had seen Alina in the morning and thought Alina looked REALLY familiar, but couldn't quite place how she knew her.

When we came back it was time for lunch and another briefing of how the afternoon was to play out.  I had to take a group to the special needs yard to play with the children and then all of the women headed to the small and medium girls houses (over 150 of them) to take their measurements.  Measuring is done both for the government records and for sponsors back in the States and Denmark (and any other countries that are involved) to know what sizes their children are in case they'd like to buy them clothing for Christmas.  After measuring it was time for supper.

When dishes were done and the dining hall cleaned, we had a team meeting where we got prepped on the events of tomorrow.  After this, John (one of the adults from the MD team) mentioned that they would be giving beads again this year.  I may need to wait a couple of days until I get the hang of this to explain the beads, but Alina gave me a yellow bead for demonstrating leadership through this entire process.  Bob got a red bead for showing love in cleaning up even though it began raining and others headed back to the team house.  There were many beads given.  Again, I'll try to get the hang of how this works and explain in a future posting.  When the meeting was done, the teens headed to the "awesome room" and played "4 on the Couch".  It's a hard game to describe, but involves a lot of concentration.  I watched for a bit, but then decided to turn in for the night.  Perhaps I'll play tomorrow!

The Team has Arrived!

After a really nice, long, much-needed sleep...Kelsey, Alina & I awoke and got ready for the morning.  We headed up to the 6th floor of our hotel for a continental breakfast and Kelsey took this picture of her breakfast, since it was her first Honduran meal ever!  It included scrambled eggs with cheese, papaya (pineapple and watermelon were also offered), refried beans, fried plantains, a tamale (wrapped in the corn husk), and desert.  Alina chose to have the coco krispies.  They also served mango juice which Kelsey tried.  She loved all of the food.

After breakfast we were picked up by Jose Ramon, the taxi driver who had driven us to the hotel the day before.  We saw Andi first, who is the team coordinator from Orphanage Emmanuel.  She comes to the airport with the orphanage bus to pick teams up as they come in.  Then the Maryland team came out in their coral-salmon colored team shirts.  It was so exciting to see Joanne again after a year.  When we got the team settled by getting ALL luggage onto the Emmanuel bus, and then the team headed upstairs to get a bite to eat while Andi, Kelsey, Alina & I headed across the street to the City Mall.  It was Andi's 40th birthday, so she wanted to grab a hamburger - since they're scarce around the country, and we needed to get some supplies from the pharmacy (such as shampoo, conditioner, face wash, Q-tips, etc) that would last me & Alina for the next month.

We headed back to the airport for the 11:00 United flight arrival and saw Nate, Mark, Bekah, Erin & Lane come off of that flight - 5 members from the Wisconsin team.  They let us know that Bob was in line for customs, but WAY back (since his flight arrived later than theirs).  I took those 5 upstairs to get a bite to eat and ordered a little extra for Bob.  Once Bob got out from his Delta flight, everybody got on the bus and we headed to Emmanuel.

The big girls recognized me right away as I was getting my luggage to my room and started shouting "Gloria!" (their name for me since LoriAnn is hard to pronounce).  I set the luggage next to the bunk that I chose to be mine and then headed down to visit with Coco, Lilian, Doris, Yenci & then walked up to the medium girls kitchen to visit Michell.  We had a brief orientation at 4pm with Andi about the rules and expectations of teams (and the WHY behind those rules, which helped clarify a little more for those who've never been here before), and then I unpacked and headed to supper at 6pm.  After supper, Joanne held a briefing about Friday's events and we headed to bed since most were very tired from their flight.

Hola Honduras 2014

Hola to ALL -

What a year it's been...God is doing great things!  This past year there were some people who've expressed interest in coming along with me to Orphanage Emmanuel, so my experience down here will begin a little differently.  We've joined with the Maryland team for an 11-day journey to Honduras, and I will get to experience the first week and a 1/2 of my time down here as a team member, and the final 19 days as a volunteer (completely different roles/responsibilities).

One of the girls who's coming along on this trip is a former student of mine, Kelsey.  She spent last night at our house and decided to stay up all night with Alina.  I wasn't able to get much sleep either, so I only slept for about 50 minutes and spent the rest of the night doing the final touches on packing and then weighing my suitcase over and over to ensure it was not over the 50 pound limit.

We left our house about 3:15am to catch our 5:45am flight out of Green Bay.  Our connection was in Atlanta, where we caught the second flight into the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa.

All of our flights were on time which was nice.  We experienced a little bit of turbulence upon landing in Tegucigalpa and the passengers cheered much more than normal when we landed...if you're not up-to-date on how dangerous it is to land in the capital of Honduras, you may want to google a video of the plane ride on YouTube.

Kelsey, Alina & I exchanged our money at the airport before meeting a Christian taxi driver named Jose Ramon.  He was super nice and chatted with us all the way to our hotel.  The girls were hungry, so after getting our luggage into the room, we walked to the MultiPlaza Mall and the girls were able to experience a fancy Honduran mall.  It was a slow transition into the experience of being in Honduras in that not all Hondurans go to the mall, generally only the richest of the rich can afford to go (so they were not yet exposed to extreme amounts of poverty), but yet they had the experience of being in the minority with everybody around them speaking a language that was not English.  In the cafe court, we decided to eat Honduran fast food, so we ordered pupusas which are hand-made tortillas filled with cheese.  After that, the girls were able to explore the mall for a bit and noticed that there were both American stores as well as Honduran stores.  When we began to feel tired from lack of sleep, we stopped at an ice cream shop to give us that last bit of sugar to get us through the walk back to the hotel.  Before leaving, I purchased an internet stick at the mall so that I could write these daily blogs.  Internet here is sketchy, so I'm not sure how often I'll be able to upload this blog...but hope to keep you up-to-date as much as possible.

We had a safe walk back to the hotel and pretty much turned in for the night by 7pm!