We had our morning trek to the medium boys house for circle and the children said 'goodbye' to the Ohio group that has been here for the last week. Jordy (a 6-week volunteer) was also leaving this morning with the Ohio group, so the boys said their 'goodbyes' to him as well. We walked the boys down to breakfast after circle and watched as many people, mostly teens, from the Ohio group were crying as they said their goodbyes. Quite a few had made some good connections while here, and there were some teens I've recognized from last year's group, as well as some that this is their 3rd trip. It is really something special to be able to come multiple times over the years and see the children group. I'm sure that Alina, Noah and I will be in that situation in another 2 weeks when we get ready to leave Honduras. Even Noah has stunned me by how well he's adapted to the culture here. He seems to have had a much easier transition (emotionally) than Alina did her first year down here.
I found out during breakfast that the class I teach has off of school today so that means I wouldn't be teaching calculus today, but spending the entire morning reading 1-on-1 with the 5th grade non-readers. This filled my morning and as Noah and I read with the two boys, Alina worked with 2 older girls to get all of the donated notebooks (and other school supplies) from the semi container shelved and put away in the school storage room that I had organized years ago when they switched from wood shelving to metal shelving. When shelving school supplies was done, Alina headed to the panaderia (bakery) to help the girls there make buns for supper.
When we went with the boys to lunch, I asked Wade if Noah could eat lunch and supper each day with the boys because Noah seems to be losing weight with all of the extra walking/running/playing he's doing each day. He eats quite a bit of food from our place, but is always hungry and is sleeping a lot (perhaps going through a growth spurt?). Wade said that would be fine and showed Noah the process for getting a plate each day. Today's lunch was noodles and vegetables.
After lunch, we headed up to the team house because Veronica Diaz (who is in charge of that when teams come) had said she'd open the orphanage's souvenir shop for us. We found a few items to bring back home while chatting with Veronica and Verenice. When we came back to put our purchases away, we saw the medium boys playing in the yard next to our room. The 11 ladies that had left earlier in the week had left some food in the fridge for us, including red grapes. Although Alina and Noah like grapes, I don't think they've ever been exposed to grapes that still have the seed in them and they decided that they'd rather not eat those. So I washed them up and had Noah take them down to the medium boys. They disappeared instantly! I had also purchased a small loaf of coconut bread in town for us all to try. Again, Alina and Noah weren't too keen on this bread, so I cut it into slices and sent it with Noah down to the yard...another thing gobbled up by the medium boys. I'm glad that the food is not going to waste!
While we were in the kitchen, David came with a new fridge. The one in the kitchen stopped working last night, possibly with the storm. They tried to fix it, but to no avail. This fridge that was being dropped off had been in storage quite a while, so it needed quite a cleaning. When we opened the door to the fridge, I saw (funny that no one else did) a cockroach about 2" long run and hide way in the back of the fridge! We are now sharing the hotel with the Miller family that came in last night. They are a family of five - Chris and Laurie are the parents and then 2 daughters, Rachel and Rebecca that are around Alina's age and a son, Nathaniel who is around Noah's age. Laurie, Rachel, Rebecca and I worked quickly and furiously to clean the fridge out with soaps and bleaches so that we could get our food cooled down as soon as possible. When we got the last shelf out, there was the cockroach, hiding. Rachel killed it quickly and we were able to finish cleaning it all up and get our food in it. The entire process of swapping out the fridges and cleaning the new one and putting food away probably took us around 45 minutes.
We headed over to the yard where the medium boys were, and while I sat on the steps chatting with some boys, Alina and Noah played soccer with others. When it was time to line up to go to supper, we walked with them to supper and Noah ate with the boys once again...mostly beans with a few noodles. Noah asked for 2 scoops when he should've asked for one, because it took him a while to eat, and he ended up being the LAST person eating in the comedor!
After supper, we headed back to our room to settle down. Coco came over with 2 friends and I offered them a piece of cake that was left over by the 11 ladies. They gobbled it up along with some guava juice that I had picked up in town on Wednesday. Later in the evening, Michell came over to say 'good night'. I hadn't seen her all day and she let me know that she was at Esperanza's house babysitting her sick daughter, and that she would most likely be there all day tomorrow too.
Noah played with Nathaniel for about an hour while Alina worked on her Spanish assignment, until it was time to head to bed for the evening. I have probably mentioned that it starts to get pretty dark here by about 6pm due to the mountains, so we tend to turn in to bed around 7pm. This gives the kids about 10 hours of sleep to recoup for the work that the next day will entail.