With the Medium Boys ALL Day

Noah and I headed to the medium boys house at 6am while Alina headed to the baby house, as usual.  Today is Saturday so there is no school for the children.  We will be with them all day.  We hung out as they got ready for the morning and then walked with them down to the comedor (dining hall) to have breakfast.  Noah is having a hard time finishing breakfast, especially, on time.  He's not used to having arroz con leche (rice with milk) and doesn't care for it too terribly much either.  Hopefully by the end of the month-long stay, he'll be better...as it's an acquired taste.

After breakfast, we headed to the yard out front of the school.  We were here all morning.  I got quite a sunburn even though I was in the shade the entire time.  The medium boys (especially Eduardo and Brayan) spent more time this morning pulling more grays out of my hair and then braiding it.  Ouch, ouch, and ouch!  We chatted, and I also did a few homework problems in front of them, but had to put the calculus away when it became to difficult to concentrate with all of the noise going on in the background from the other boys playing soccer.  Noah played soccer with the boys the entire time.

My braid from the medium boys

When it was time for lunch, we headed to the comedor again.  Then after lunch we headed back to the medium boys house for the afternoon where they played even more.  They played soccer and basketball and then invited me to bump the volleyball back and forth with them.  They have a volleyball, but I think they use that ball more for playing soccer and basketball than using it for playing volleyball.

After supper we visited with Michell for about an hour before heading to the team house.  We were invited to the team house to have supper with the team.  They had fried tilapia, rice, guacamole, pico de gallo, chips, watermelon, and a very yummy bread dessert.  After the dinner, we headed home, each read a chapter in our books and almost fell immediately to sleep.

No Photos :-(

This morning we got a little bit of a break because since it's Friday, there is 'Big Circle' right outside our room.  Big Circle, which happens on Fridays only, is where all of the children come together to do morning devotions.  Because they are gathering together here, it generally doesn't start until 6:30am rather than 6am that we need to be out the door every other day.  Unfortunately, although I had my camera on me almost all day, I completely forgot to take pictures because it was the first chance I've had to see ALL of the children since last year...so I walked around the circle and said 'good morning' and hugged many of the kids I had not yet seen.  A man from the Ohio group gave the devotions for big circle today.  He talked about the Bible's reference to the importance of the different parts of the body and compared it to the importance of each player on a soccer team in order to be successful, and then to the importance of each of the talents that are needed to keep Orphanage Emmanuel running well.  From Big Circle, the children head to the comedor (dining hall) to have breakfast.  After breakfast I went to my room to get my calculus because I was supposed to teach all morning (from 8:30am-noon).

While I was introducing integrals to the students this morning, Noah was able to stay behind in the yards and play with the medium boys.  I found out that he also got to ride around with Salomon (Moncho), who is in charge of the medium boys and do some errands here and there.  Moncho told me that Noah behaved well...no complaints.  I think Noah just likes riding on a gator.

After lunch, I walked into town with Milton to see if we could get a handful of movies for the medium boys, so that we could have movie nights similar to what we did with them last year.  I had a list of 10 movies, so the man said that it would take 24 hours to get them to me.  I'm guessing we'll need to walk into town again tomorrow.  I sure am getting my steps in!

During the afternoon, I was in the yards with the medium boys.  I stayed up in the pavilion with the special needs boys while the other played on the swings or played soccer.  When school was out, we headed back to the medium boys house to do the ensenanza (afternoon devotions).  Chino (one of the older boys in charge) led ensenanza and talked about proper behavior and how the boys were supposed to treat each other, in a way that is respectful to God.  We headed to supper, and ended the night with the breaking of a pinata that the Ohio group had brought over for the boys.  Again, I was wishing I had my camera at this point, but I guess earlier in the day I had taken it out of my bag.  Hoping to make a point of making sure that the camera is with me at all times!

Teaching Calculus

I woke up this morning at 3:30am, which will probably be the 'norm' for me every day except for Sundays.  I shower, get dressed and the sit down to have some quiet devotional time before prepping for the day.  Today and tomorrow, my 'prep for the day' entails getting ready to teach calculus.  When it was 5:30am, I woke up Alina and Noah so that we could be at our assignments (Alina is at the baby house and Noah and I are at the medium boys house) by 6am.  It is NOT easy waking Alina and Noah so early!

When Noah and I got to the medium boys house, we waited out in the pavilion in front of their house for the boys to come out for their morning circle (devotional time).  Some of the grandecitos boys ran over with a snake that they had killed, trying to scare the medium boys while we waited for devotions to begin.  Also as we waited, there were 2 boys who decided that I was way too young to have gray hair, so they worked at pulling each one out (ouch!).  Then they proceeded to braid my hair for me.  I had left it down this morning, thinking I would put it up later, because it was still cool outside.

After devotions, we headed to breakfast.  Most mornings will be arroz con leche for Noah and me.  It's not on Noah's 'favorite' list, so between his morning medications and not really having a taste for this type of breakfast, he's taking quite a bit longer than the boys to eat.  The other meals he eats just fine.  When we walked to the school, Profe Ramon (the math teacher) told me that one of the other high school teachers was out ill today and he asked if I could teach math all morning.  I said that I'd have to run back to our room to pick up my notes (since I hadn't planned on coming in to teach until 10am).  I got back to the school at 9am and worked with the students on derivatives the rest of the morning.

Over the lunch hour, I rested until we heard the drums in the elementary school celebrating Dia del Indio.  I had posted about this a little bit last year, but it is a celebration meaning, Day of the Indian.  A male and female representative from each grade dress up as the indio and india and judges vote on who best represents the indio/india.  Also during the afternoon, various classes give presentations via recitations, dances, etc.

The kindergartners putting on a traditional dance for Dia de Indio

Maricela with her daughter, Perla

The India and Indio (Jefferson) for 2017 came from the kindergarten class

After school was finished we headed to the medium boys house.  Noah has been excited about the medium boys house having a basketball pole and tonight he got to show off his stuff.  It sounds like he'll be playing a lot of basketball down here with the medium boys this next month.  We then went to supper and finally went to the gym with the medium boys to play until 6pm.  A new group came in today and most of them ended up in the gym at some point to play with the boys as well.

Noah playing basketball with Salomon (Moncho)

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.

Headed to Emmanuel 2017

It is that time of year again!  Time for me to pack up a couple of my kids and spend the next month down in Honduras!!!  We are so excited to be going down.  This year our trip had a couple of 'hiccups' since Alina will have to be back to the States early to participate in fall sports.  Since she wanted to spend as much time as possible down this way, Bob will be headed down here in a week and a half, stay for a week and then Alina will go back with him.

Our trip started with renting a car to get down to O'Hare.  I saw on the news Monday that it was also Day #1 of EAA, and the man at the car rental agency said he had absolutely no cars available due to EAA and had already received 4-5 phone calls that very day checking to see if there were availabilities.  I was glad that I took care of the rental back when I bought the plane tickets to go down to Honduras.  My mom dropped Noah and I off at Avis Car Rental on the east side of Appleton and we brought the 2017 Nissan Altima back to our house for the remainder of the evening.  The suitcase preparation takes a while as we need to make sure we get as close to 50 pounds without going over as possible.  It takes a bit of shuffling around before it's done.

Around 11:30pm on Monday night Alina, Noah & I packed the cars and headed out.  Alina was the first to fall asleep in the car around Milwaukee and Noah was playing games on the Kindle.  We went through a 24-hour McDonald's where I had him and Alina switch places (so Noah would be in the front seat and Alina could stretch out in the back).  I asked him to chat with me from time to time so that I didn't fall asleep...so he kept me awake through to O'Hare and helped me get the toll money out each time.  We dropped the car off at the Avis rental agency down at O'Hare and took the shuttle bus to the airport.  When we went to the kiosk to check in, Alina realized that her bag was over by about a pound.  I got my keys out to rearrange the suitcase and my keys didn't work on her lock.  Thankfully, she had enough in outside pockets (most of it was garbage from last year's travels) to take her down to exactly 50 pounds.

Noah still full of energy at 3am

Checking in went well, and the flight to Houston went well.  We were on United, which is the first time I've flown with them.  I do have to say - I prefer Delta.  We've never flown into Houston before, and the nice part of the connection here is that we were dropped off at gate E11 and had to board the flight to Tegucigalpa at gate E12, so not too much walking.  Many times at Atlanta we have to take the underground tram/subway when we have our connection, so this was a blessing.  We also noticed that at gate E13, that flight (which left at the same time ours did) was headed to San Pedro Sula in Honduras too!

Noah trying to get comfortable after staying awake all night

Alina and I slept a little bit on the first flight, but not Noah waited until this flight.  I think he fell asleep mid-movie!  When we got into Tegucigalpa, the line to head through customs was much longer than usual.  Noah wanted to sleep on the floor as we waited to get through customs.  I found him a pillar to sit up against while we waited to head through the lines.  Alina got finger-printed this year because she is 14.  Noah was a little disappointed that he didn't get finger-printed.  When we got through customs, and got our bags, we met up with Norman.  We knew that our good friends, the Miller family were also coming today so we had to wait an extra 2 hours for them to arrive.  I saw on Facebook (the airport has free Wifi) that they weren't sure if they were going to make their flight out of Miami because their flight to Miami was delayed.  That's the last anyone had heard from them.  We decided to wait anyway, so Noah and Norman put the suitcases in his van and then I took the kids upstairs in the airport to get them some paninis (to avoid more grease since we had quite a bit of fast food the day before).  We exchanged money, and then I got a chip for my cell phone and for my modem so that I could communicate back home and enter these blogs.  American Airlines came in and all of their customers came through...no Miller family.  Norman asked security about them, and then Rachel came out and explained that they got on the plane (just barely) but their luggage did not, so they had to take care of some paperwork and make sure that the bags would get to the orphanage the following day.

We got to Emmanuel around 5pm and a few girls saw us (including Michell), so stopped by to chat.  We chatted for a bit, but went to bed extremely early since we were running on around 1 hour of sleep since Monday morning.