My First Nap Here

This morning was the same routine...cutting veggies at the Toddler House, feeding them breakfast, playing in the pavilion/play house, then feeding them lunch before their afternoon nap.  The difference between today and all of the others days I've been here though is that I was exhausted, so when I went back to our room at about 12:30, I decided to set my alarm and nap for an hour.  A lot of times I'll head to another yard or do something during this 2 hour downtime, but today I was just too tired.

MacKenzie handing out snacks to the toddlers in the pavilion

Chris (Laurie's husband) spent the afternoon with us in the Toddler House to get a feel for what our daily job is.  He's been fixing washing machines and changing light bulbs around the orphanage.  Before that he was working on wiring and the electrical for the medium boys house which got a new roof put on.  Here in Honduras, putting on a new roof means completely taking off the old roof until there are only 4 walls to the house and replacing all of the wood roof frame and then the roof itself...it's not simply re-shingling.

There was a buzz this morning about supper this evening.  Katja let all of the houses know she'd be bringing cream and cheese around to all of the houses so they needed to plan accordingly.  Mirna (the cook for the Toddler House) wanted to make eggs, but didn't have enough oil, so she asked us if we had some.  I didn't, however Laurie did and had Rachel give it to her and tell her that she'd like the left-overs.  I'm guessing there was something lost in the translation, because Mirna used an ENTIRE BOTTLE of oil on the supper.  She felt terrible when Laurie came back looking for the left-over oil.  Supper consisted of eggs with onions and cheese sprinkled over a tortilla and then cream on top...YUM.

After the kiddos were showered and put to bed and dishes were washed, Alina and I headed to the school playground where the small girls were playing.  I chatted with Reina and Yolani (2 big girls who help out and live with the small girls that I've gotten to know over the years) while Alina played with the small girls.  There was a little boy they were chatting with, although I didn't catch his name, whose hands and body were badly burnt.  They told me that he was at Emmanuel because his mom purposely pushed him into a fire which was burning garbage because she didn't want him.  As they were telling me this, the little boy agreed that was what truly happened and added to the story.  Many of his fingers are bent because his scared tissue underneath the knuckles will not allow for his fingers to straighten.  This boy is living in the power toddler house, so is most likely only 5 or 6 years old.  My heart just broke for him.

Alina and I ended the night sitting next to the water fountain in front of the church and just admiring God's creation of nature around us.  What a way to end the evening!

Use #1374 for Duct Tape

Alina with Michell at Big Circle

We were told last night that there wouldn't be any veggies to cut this morning, so we could come a little later.  That was exciting news since today is Friday...meaning it's Big Circle once again.  Big Circle begins at 6am right outside our room, but the boys start coming at 5:30, so it's hard to miss it.  Today is also Katja's birthday.  We listened to the message/devotion/sermon this morning from a member of the AL team.  When the singing began after the message, we headed to the Toddler House only to find out that we could've stayed for all of Big Circle...oh well, perhaps next week (as it will be our last).

This morning the lady in charge of monitoring the kids at the Pavilion, Glinda, had a doctor's appointment for her pregnancy check-up...she's 5 months along.  Carla asked if I was okay with taking Glinda's place for the morning and being in charge (so to speak).  That was okay.  I now have a 2nd kiddo who's "stuck" to me...Jeremias.  He's generally a happy little boy whose mom is not here (so not one of the teen moms kiddos).  Whenever I sit down, he runs over to sit on my lap.  It went well in the pavilion with the kids.  Glinda came around lunch time and took over putting the kiddos down for a nap.

LoriAnn with Jeremias

This evening I had a chat with Doris (one of the big girls that I've known for the past 7 years).  She has a good friend, Beth, who just came in today with her husband.  Beth is from the U.S. and has been working to get Doris' papers fixed so that she can come up to the States from November to February on a visit.  Doris is pretty excited about that, but also nervous in a way.

This evening when we got back to our room, there were 2 places in the bathroom where ants were coming and going.  I knew there was a reason why I had kept the duct tape from our team...it's to patch up those holes to keep the ants in the ground and not in the rooms!!!  Ugh, yuck.

Teen Moms Get Attention

This morning began as the others did this week...but now first doing devotions and trying to madly post many of the blogs that I was not able to post over the past week of my internet modem stick not working.  We headed to the Toddler House once again to cut veggies and serve breakfast and then took the kiddos to the enclosed pavilion to play.  LaDonna (a lady from FL that is working towards the adoption of one of the toddlers) came by to say goodbye to her Wilson.  She left a purse with sunglasses for another toddler, Nicole.  Nicole has been to the doctor in Tegucigalpa 3 times in the last 2 weeks because she is rapidly losing weight and they are not sure why.  She says she's 4 years old (although her charts say she's 5) and she weighs less now than she did 2 years ago.  Nicole is a spunky little girl who has taken a preference to hanging out with me any time I'm around.  When others extend their hands out to her to hold her, she refuses and snuggles in to me even closer.  We're hoping that whatever is going on gets figured out quickly.  Please keep her in your prayers.

Nicole

Around 9:45 we decided to take all of the kids for a walk.  Sometimes they walk to the farm, but today we walked to the front of the orphanage so that they could all look out the gates at the world outside Emmanuel.  As many from the Alabama team were watching the toddlers at the gates, MacKenzie spent time working with the teen moms in team-building activities like doing the human knot, trust falls, and then the circular sit.  Okay, I made up the name for the last one because I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but I can describe it...everyone stands in a tight circle, your toes to the heels in front of you and on the count of 3 you all sit down.  If it's done correctly, you're all sitting on the lap of the person behind you...if it's not done correctly, you fall down.

When it got close to lunch, we headed back with the kids to the Toddler House to serve lunch and put them down for naps.  This afternoon there were no classes, so the teen moms got to stay back at their houses.  When I headed back to the Toddler House to wake the kiddos up from the naps, I brought the "famous" chili suckers back to the houses for the teen moms and all of the other workers there.  They were so excited.  You see, many people come to the Baby House and the Toddler House to give attention to the babies and toddlers (of course)...but it's rare for the teen moms to get attention.  I was glad that this was a day where they were recognized and worked with!

La Cucaracha

I generally get up around 4am here so that I can have my devotional time with God and journal.  Then with the time left over, I try to get online to blog a bit if the internet is working.  If it's not working, I have a word search book that my mom had given me a couple of year ago or I have a book to read.  This morning, since the internet was not working...it hasn't been working for the past week...I was doing the word search.  When Alina's alarm went off and she sat up in bed, she said (1/2 tired yet), "There's a cockroach next to my bed!"  Sure enough, I'm guessing one had fell in through the cracks in the ceiling from the roof and it was lying on its back.  The cockroaches down here are huge, about 1.5-2 inches long (and that's just the BODY).  I went over to check it out and the legs were still moving, so giggling I said to Alina that she should get the broom and sweep it out.  She didn't want to at first.  I let her know that if it had been a tarantula or a scorpion, I would've swept it out.  But it's a cockroach!...they don't bite, they just run really fast and look gross.  So she went to get the broom and "slowly" tried to sweep it out.  If you know anything about cockroaches, then you can probably guess what happened next.  Because Alina didn't sweep it out using quick strokes, the cockroach grabbed the bristles of the broom and flipped itself over, and then sprinted underneath her suitcase.  She freaked out!  At that point there was no calming her down, so I told her to lift the suitcase while I held the broom (she didn't even want to lift the suitcase)...and when she did I quickly swept it out of the room onto the grass.

On the way to the toddler house I let Alina know that today way our 1/2-way point in this trip.  She took a few more steps and said, "It only feels like I've been here a couple of days."  I laughed and replied that it HAD to have been more because we had a whole team down here at the beginning for 11 days!

After cutting vegetables and serving breakfast, I headed with Melinda and Heather (two ladies from the AL team) to the school to remeasure the medium girls from Vero Castro's house.  Elizabeth was pretty sure that many of these measurements were off too.  I believe that we got all but about 2 measured.

I stopped at the tienda to check in with Carmen who knows about the Claro internet modem sticks and she said that most likely the problem was that the 7 free days that came with the stick were put on it but that the internet stick was never activated, even though the month was purchased.  This did not really sit well with me.  She let me know that she'd look more into it after church this evening because her phone didn't have enough minutes on it to check at that time.  While I was at the store, Alina noticed a Coca-Cola bottle with Andres' name on it.  I guess Coke is putting names on bottles now?  Anyway, I had to purchase it and hope that it makes it back to the States without exploding on the plane.

Anyone recognized this name?...and it even has the accent too!

We headed back to the Toddler House at 2:15pm to wake the kiddos from their naps and play with them for an hour before suppertime.  After supper, they got their normal showers as I washed the dishes and they were sent to bed.  Everybody was rushing because there was church this evening and it starts at 4:30.  Alina and I barely made it back to our room to change clothes and get to church on time.

After church I took the internet stick to Carmen and she was able to fix it.  I was SO appreciative for what she did, but now I'll be super busy for the next bunch of mornings trying to catch up on devotions!

Supper with Elizabeth's Parents

Alina and I headed back to the toddler house this morning to cut veggies and serve breakfast.  After breakfast, some toddlers go to Kindergarten while the others hang back and play either at their playground/park or in the enclosed play Pavilion.  Alina stayed back with the toddlers, but my assistance was needed in measuring some children that were not measured last week while the Maryland team was here.  Here at Emmanuel there are actually 2 medium girls houses, but the team had only gotten to 1 house.  So I headed to the school (where most of the girls were) and began measuring there.  Andi sent 2 of the Alabama team members over to help me out with the measuring and that made the process go even more smoothly.  We got all of the girls from Zue's medium house measured by lunch time and then I met up with Alina at the Tienda (Emmanuel's snack shop).

The Tienda was serving tostadas.  Elizabeth is a staff member here who is in charge of the Little Girls House.  I believe she's been here for about 2 years now.  I worked with her last summer for the first time and while I was down here last summer, her parents came down for a visit, so I got to know them a little bit.  They were at the Tienda today during lunch, so Alina and I sat with them.  We had a great chat and found out that we have quite a bit in common.  At the end of lunch, they invited us for supper where they are staying, which is attached to the Dental Clinic.

We headed back to the Toddler House at 2:15 for the normal afternoon routine of waking them up, playing for an hour, feeding them supper, and then showering them and doing the supper dishes.  On the way back to our room, we stopped by the Little Girls House to check in with Elizabeth about supper.  She let us know that she'd pick us up when she was finished, around 6pm to head up to where her parents were staying.

Supper was wonderful!  Elizabeth's younger brother, Joey, made the salad with cucumbers and tomatoes (and I commented on nice it looked because all the pieces were laid out on top of the salad in a symmetrical manner...the math nerd in me!).  Her mom, Kim, made spaghetti with alfredo sauce and garlic bread.  For dessert they purchased a gallon bucket of ice cream from the Tienda and had toppings to put on it as well.  We had a great time chatting with them and Kim reminded me to head to the office this week to reserve a spot for next year as the housing here is getting slim for volunteers since the orphanage is growing.  She let me know the dates they'd be back and I wanted to get as close of a time frame to that as possible so that we could catch up again next year.  We were at their house eating and chatting for about 2 hours when we realized that it was coming up on curfew time...Emmanuel has a curfew of 8:30 due to town people trying to break in after dark and Emmanuel's night security guards would not be able to tell from a distance if we were volunteers or unauthorized people on the premises.  Elizabeth gave us a ride home and we quickly went to bed.

Alina and Invisible (Pamela)

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.

Goodbye Wisconsin

This morning Alina & I said goodbye to our Wisconsin team members: Bob, Nate, Kelsey, Mark, Bekah, Erin, and Lane.  I found out later that they met up with the Maryland team at the airport since the Maryland team's plane was cancelled yesterday.  I also found out that the son of the Maryland team's leader had a tarantula in his carry on!  Oh the fun of being in a 3rd world country.  Alina and I decided that it's rougher on us for Bob to come at the beginning of the trip and leave without us.  We let him know later that we'd prefer in future trips that we come down first and Bob join us for the last leg of the trip, so that we can all go home together.

After church, we spent the afternoon socializing with the Alabama group and then headed to the big girls yard to chat with Doris and Michell.  Around supper time we moved from the Team House into the Hotel.  The room has a couch, love seat, chair, double bed and twin bed...as well as a private bath.  There is a kitchen that is shared between the 3 rooms here.

LoriAnn with Doris

Doris, LoriAnn, and Michell