After taking the boys to school and seeing them off to class, I went to the special needs yard to spend some time with Carolina, one of the ladies who is in charge of the yard. Carolina has been at Emmanuel ever since I began coming 11 years ago. She seems like tough lady on the outside, but when you begin talking to her, she is super nice and sweet and genuinely cares for all of the kids. We are all here for the same reason...to show the kids love.
As I was chatting with Carolina, one of the bigger boys came through the yard carrying baliadas. Baliadas are hand-made gargantuan tortillas with beans and eggs and a special Honduran cream (looks similar to sour cream but with a different taste). The students who will be graduating in December need to do fundraisers to pay for their graduation expenses, and this is one of many of their fundraisers. They had told me about the sale last Thursday and I had placed an order for 2 plates of baliadas. They also came with juice in a bag (rather than a glass or plastic bottle or cup). I had completely forgotten that I had placed the orders, but when I saw this big boy with his baliadas, telling me my order was ready, I quick hopped up and ran over to the school to get my order. I gave away the bags of juices to 2 students at the school and then took the baliadas back to our room for me and Noah.
I stayed in with Noah until lunch time and then we headed to the Comedor. When we were done eating lunch, Alina had her 12-2pm break, so I came back to the room with her. She had gotten her hair braided into a heart today. There is a girl in the toddler house that can make many different letters and shapes out of braids. After unlocking the door to the room for Alina, I headed out to the medium boys house to spend time with them before walking them to supper. They invited me to come back to their house later to watch movies.
When I got to their house in the evening, they were just finishing up watching the Fantastic 4 with the team members that came over (with soda and popcorn) to watch the movie with them. Rather than watching this on the "big screen" that I had described earlier, they were watching on their very little, dated television set. When the team left the house, Chino announce that we would be doing the Cinemax experience once again to watch another movie that I had bought them...Ferdinand. The boys were so excited! So I stayed even later with Noah to watch it. We didn't get back to our room until the orphanage's curfew time for volunteers (8pm) and Alina was extremely worried about how late it was. Nice to have the roles switch around for once and the daughter is worried for the mom!
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