Bob brought me & Alina to the Appleton airport and helped us rearrange our checked luggage - guess that our home scale is about 1/2 to an entire pound off. When it was time to head through security, we said our goodbyes (can't wait for Bob to join us in a couple of weeks) and then headed in to catch our plane. Alina & I stopped for a coffee and then we shared a lemon poppy-seed muffin before our flight. The last time I had flown out of Appleton, we had went right over our house, but this flight took us over the north side of Lake Winnebago, so Alina got to see all of Doty Island and it made much more of an impact on why it's called an "island" than just seeing it on a map.
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| Yep, still sleepy as we wait for our plane in Appleton |
In Atlanta, we didn't have much time at all to catch the next flight to Tegucigalpa, so we made one bathroom stop and then grabbed food to eat on the plane. The flight to Tegucigalpa was just over 3 hours. Each of the seats of the plane had a small TV to watch shows/movies, play games, listen to music, etc. I chose to watch a movie called 'Run All Night' and Alina watched the SpongeBob movie and then began to watch TinkerBell. When we arrived in Honduras, we exchanged our dollars to Lempiras and I purchased a cheap phone so that I could call back home when we arrived to the orphanage to let the family know we were okay. With phones down here, calls to the USA are only about 5 cents per minute - which is why I prefer to get a $20 phone here and then call the US, rather than use my own cell phone and pay quite a few dollars per minute. We were picked up at the airport by Norman (can't wait to take the bus system again...much more reasonable & cultural) who took us out to the orphanage.
When we came into the orphanage, we met with Andi (the volunteer coordinator) and Katja (long-time friend) who let us know that we'd once again be staying in 'Hotel #3' and working in the Toddler House mornings & nights, and I would be teaching reading in the school during the day. As we pulled our luggage out of Norman's van, we heard Invisible (my nickname for Pamela who I've known for the past 8 years...you'll hear more about her later) shouting, "Gloria! Gloria!", which is what they call me since they cannot pronounce Lori or LoriAnn. We put our luggage in our room and headed down to say 'Hi' & visit for a 1/2 hour until school let out.
Invisible let me know that there have been many changes since we've been here last year. Two staff members who were friends of mine (Elizabeth & Zue) have now left. Elizabeth will be studying in Europe after a trek through Central & South America, and Zue is getting married! I also found out that about an hour before I arrived, Doris left. Doris was like a daughter to me, I had many blog postings about her through the years. She left her cell phone number with the big girls around the yards so that they could get the number to me when I came. I did call her later on in the evening and left a message.
After chatting in the special needs yard with Invisible, we headed to the school. There we saw Elvia, Michell, Karol, Yensi, Coco and others...again, many of these girls were in past posts through the years. They've grown so much over the past 8 years I've known them. We chatted quite a bit while we were walking them back to their yard. I had a nice chat with Elvia, who is in charge of one of the big girls' houses. She let me know that she too is thinking of leaving to study some more.
Our final stop was at the Toddler House where we said 'hello' to Zelenes and the rest of the crew. We let them know that we'd be starting there tomorrow morning!
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| Hotel #3 - my bed in the background |
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| Alina's bed |
When we got back to our room, we called Doris and then Bob. We are pretty much set to get all of the donations of sporting equipment out throughout our stay here...and will try to get pictures as we do so.
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| Alina's Birthday Donations...Ready to Go! |
Welcome to Honduras 2015!
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