Catching Tarantulas?

This morning we were out the door at 5:30am and once again Alina headed to the Toddler House and we headed to the Medium Boys house.  The medium boys were outside the house having devotions as we got there.  When devotions were done, we headed to the Comedor for breakfast.  Most of the Georgia team was down in the Comedor saying their "goodbyes" to the kids since they were leaving this morning.  We found out that there would be teams coming down to Orphanage Emmanuel just about every week we'd be down here except for the last week.

As we were waiting for school to start, the boys and girls soccer teams left on a bus (along with a few others) to head for a big soccer game out of town.  The soccer field they were going to was just finished being built this month!!!  The 2 games, and a stop for lunch at a Chinese restaurant would take all day for the kids, and they weren't expected back until just before supper.  I didn't go due to having to teach calculus.  Noah and Alina did not go along either.  We heard later that both our boys and girls team lost.

School began at 7:30am, so I was in the classroom teaching calculus (definite integrals) from 7:30 until 9am.  When I came back to our room after class, Noah met me up at the room to tell me about his adventures with Selvin.  The man Noah normally works with is named Moncho, however Moncho went to the soccer game today, leaving Noah alone.  Noah tracked down Selvin (a younger man who speaks fluent English) and decided to work with him.  Noah let me know that they caught an alligator and a bunch of tarantulas (YUCK!).  I am still waiting to see the video footage from Selvin to verify that they actually caught a young alligator (probably about 10 inches long) because I am having a hard time believing that actually happened.  But when Noah described the process of catching tarantulas, I knew he participated in that because the process is typical for down here.  They used a bucket of water and poured them down holes in the ground where tarantulas are...which makes the tarantulas crawl out.  Noah said the one they caught was smaller than normal and a yellowish-color.

Noah went with Selvin to fix the fountain out front of the church because it was overflowing.  After fixing the fountain, Selvin pushed Noah into the fountain - I'm guessing because boys horse around.  Good thing Noah was wearing all dri-fit clothes, so they dried very quickly!  Noah said he had a lot of fun working with Selving this morning.

The fountain

We all headed to lunch and in the afternoon I went back to our room to work on this blog, to work on a good review for calculus tomorrow and to rest.  When it was time to go to supper, I met up with the Miller family and they shared stories of their day at the soccer game.  It sounded like a LOT of fun!!!

After supper, Alina went over to where the Miller family was staying to play games with their 3 kids who are between the ages of 12 and 19.  Noah went to the medium boys house to play some basketball, and I worked more on the calculus lesson for tomorrow. 

The curfew here at Emmanuel is 8pm for volunteers, although it gets very dark by about 7pm (not at all like in Wisconsin).  I have told the kids that they need to be back when the sun goes down so that they can get some good sleep in order to get up early again the next morning.