Day #1 at Emmanuel

Due to extensive travel over the past day and a half, we slept in a bit this morning.  Believe it or not (those who know us well), Alina was the FIRST to wake up!  Normally we need to be to our assignments by 6am, but we slept in until 8am.  I figured that since many children hadn't yet seen us, perhaps it would be a good idea to head out after the kids had went to school.  Noah and I walked Alina to the baby house first and chatted with Glenda and Sofia.  Alina wanted to stay there for the day and help, so we left her and then headed to school so Noah could say hello to some of his friends.

At school I met up with Profesor Ramon and he asked if I could start teaching Calculus tomorrow.  He told me that he had begun teaching it, but it was becoming increasingly difficult and he had to work more with the other grades for their upcoming math test.  The math test for those graduating is next week Friday.  There's a lot to prep them for before that.  He gave me the math text book and some of my notes from last year and we had a conversation about where I should pick up with the lessons.

At 9am, we met the Miller family in the office to chat with Morgan about where she would be placing/assigning all of us to work.  The Miller family girls and Alina were placed in the baby house, Rachel was asked to get the reading going with the elementary children again (something I had done for the past few years and Rachel would take over when she got here), Chris and his son Nathaniel were asked to work with Mike on fixing things and building around the orphanage, and Noah and I were place with the medium boys house (and I also would be teaching during the day).

After leaving the school, Noah and I headed to the gymnasium where some of the medium boys and the special needs boys were playing soccer.  We played until lunch time and then headed to the comedor.  We will be eating with the boys from here on out, and Noah is learning how to eat much faster so that he can leave with the boys.  Last year he was not very successful at doing this...this year seems to be going quite a bit better.  After lunch, we headed back to our room to rest for a little bit and then I worked through my devotions for the day.  I normally do devotions first thing in the morning, but due to sleeping in...they just didn't get done yet.  After devotions, we headed to supper with the medium boys.  Supper on Wednesday happens really early since there is church at 4pm.  A man from the Alabama team gave the sermon, but after a while it got difficult to hear because the rains came.  It is the rainy season here, so they come and last for about 5-10 minutes, and then pass over.  It will rain once a day or multiple times during the day.  When church was done, it was still raining.  The boys were excused to their houses in the rain, but they allowed the girls to stay in the church until the rains passed over.

When we got back to our room, I began prepping for teaching Calculus tomorrow while Noah and Alina played some of the games we had bought from the Dollar Tree.  We bought games last year, and Noah taught some of the medium boys how to play them...then left the games with the medium boys when we headed back to the States.  When I finished prepping the Calculus, I read a chapter in my book and asked Alina and Noah to do the same before heading to bed.  It gets dark here by 6pm, so it's pretty normal to head to bed between 7:30 and 8pm.