Heading Back to the States

So today is the day!  I can't say that Noah and I are super-excited about heading back to the USA.  In all honesty, leaving is the most difficult part of this trip.  But the time has come.  Noah took my sandals and tennis shoes to the baby house where Invisible was in order to give them to her.  She seems to be the only girl at the orphanage with feet as big as mine.  While Noah was doing this, I had a few letters and paletas and clothing items to drop off at the big girls house.  We agreed to meet up at the medium boys house for devotions.

At the medium boys house, the boys took turns thanking Noah for spending so much time with them and playing with them.  They wished Noah well in this next year and said they were excited to see him again next year.  Juan Carlos translated for the medium boys as they were thanking Noah and talking to Noah.

Noah with his medium boys

 We headed to the Comedor with the boys although today we didn't eat.  We spent a lot of time finding various kids around the Comedor to say our goodbyes to.  I said goodbye to Michell quite a few other girls.  We walked to school with the medium boys and hung out with them for a while.  I walked over to the high school to get my hair braided and say a few more goodbyes.  When I began heading back to the elementary school, Eliberto caught me on his bike with a letter from Luis David.  That's when I realized I didn't even see him at breakfast.  He was waiting by the large warehouse...and I could tell he had been crying a lot.  At 20 years old, our visits (and especially leaving) has really touched him.  We chatted quite a bit before I had to go get Noah to head back to our room.

Noah with Gibran - his sponsored child

I dropped off the remainder of our paletas with Doris in the office so that she could hand them to children as they came to the office to visit with parents or chat on the phone with parents.  She gave me quite a few CDs of the children at the orphanage singing praise songs.  When I got back up to our room, David and Lydia (the founders of the orphanage) were both up there to say goodbye.  They thanked both Noah and I for our time there, and the many years we've been coming.  It was such a precious moment for me.  Suly was up there as well, with lots of smiles and saying she'd see me soon at her wedding!

Norman picked us up at 8am and on our drive back to the airport, we saw a dead cow on the side of the road.  I think it may be the first time EVER that we've seen ANY sort of dead animal on the side of the road.  We were also stopped by the police because they had to check all of Norman's plates/stickers to be sure his van was registered correctly and up-to-date.  It was a really short 3-minute stop and didn't really hinder our timing to get home at all. 

Our flights back to the USA went flawlessly and the only hiccup in our travels was that I forgot to take my current drivers license, which meant I was ultimately unable to rent the car I had reserved.  Thankfully we were able to easily take the 'L' to downtown Chicago and only have to walk about a block to the Greyhound bus station in order to catch a 8:45am bus to Appleton.  The bus ride was about 5 hours, so not too extensive, and we were back home by 2:30pm.  It was a good year and a great experience.  We cannot wait for 2019!

Writing Letter and Packing

The bulk of the day today, as our last full day here at Orphanage Emmanuel was consumed by 3 things:

1. Writing letters to a bunch of children at the orphanage
2. Packing our things to go home
3. Spending time with the kids here

Right away after getting up and ready for the day, we began dividing up the things that would get packed versus what we'd be leaving behind and giving away.  Because we're positive that Noah will be in a bigger size next summer, most of his clothes (like Alina's) are staying down here.  He took his smaller sized underwear to the medium boys house and commented to me on how quickly boys grabbed them.  Small things like that, which we take for granted, are items which the orphanage tends to be super short on (especially for the boys), so they really need and ultimately want them.

Noah took his basketball clothes to the big boys house (ages 16+), and I saw many of the big boys running down to the gymnasium later in the day and shouting at me that they were headed to play basketball and BECAUSE they were wearing Noah's basketball shorts, shirts, etc...they were going to play "as good as Noah"!!!  What a compliment.

We spent quite a bit of time after school let out at the medium boys house watching movies with them.  Chino gave me a really nice painting as we were there (which he painted), with all of the boys names that live in the medium boys house.  I am so used to giving the children gifts, that receiving a gift was so unexpected...I got a bit choked up.  Okay, I cried quite a few tears of joy and gratefulness! 

I didn't want to neglect Michell, so I headed to the house she lives in around 5:45pm and stayed until 7pm...so we could say our goodbyes.  

It was a very difficult day and night for us.  Leaving is the most difficult part of the trip.  Noah actually told me that he just preferred to stay down in Honduras and I could pick him up next year!

Noah's Sponsored Child

We are winding down...only 2 days left here at Emmanuel and then Wednesday we will be in transit all day back to Wisconsin.  I decided to head to the Big Girls House this morning to socialize and have devotions with them, while Noah went to the Medium Boys House.  We met up in the Comedor for breakfast and then headed to school with the kids.  While Noah socialized with the medium boys at school until classes began, I went over to the high school by Suly and Misel braided my hair.  She seemed sad that tomorrow will be the last day of braiding my hair - although I told her I'd most likely stop by Wednesday morning to get my hair braided before heading to the capital (Tegucigalpa) to catch our plane.

When classes began, Noah and I headed to the orphanage office to chat with Sara.  Noah had chosen a child to sponsor last year who was picked up by his mother shortly after we began sponsoring him.  So, he had used this past month to get to know some of the medium boys better and decided on sponsoring Gibran, and 11 year old boy who has been here for the past number of years.  Gibran has an older brother (Cristopher) and and older sister Zelenes.  Cristopher and Gibran came to church with us yesterday, so you can see them in the picture I had posted yesterday.  Zelenes graduated from high school 2 years ago and decided to become a police officer.

At recess, little Alejandra found me right away and wanted to chat with me for a while.  Her friend, Suyapa, also sat next to me.  I spent about 1/2 of recess with Alejandra (who is in elementary school) and then went over to the high school since they have recess at the same time, and spent the remainder of the time with Michell.

After recess was finished, I took Noah to the 'tienda' since we still have a little bit of money on our account.  They had omelets for sale this morning, so we decided to split one.  It's the first time in the month Noah's been down here that he actually said he was extremely full.  We had a few loose ends to tie up here, including Noah figuring out how to fix a bike that had a tire pop while he was riding it, so that took up the remainder of the morning before heading to the Comedor for lunch.

Due to select students having to practice in the afternoon for the upcoming Independence Day parade in September, the majority of students didn't have school this afternoon, so we headed to the Medium Boys House to watch movies, jump on the trampoline (Noah) and play ping pong with them.  When it was time for supper, we headed that way and then I headed back to our room to do some cleaning while Noah went to the Medium Boys House until about 6pm.  Suly stopped by and we had a wonderful chat about her upcoming wedding in the States and other things. 

When Noah got back, we finished the evening by watching the movie Pixels on Netflix.  I have a couple of extra GB on the modem that won't get used up before we leave, so it was nice to have some time to watch a movie with him.

Dia Libre

Today is Sunday.  It's our free day and our last Sunday here, so Noah and I are going to make the most of it.  So we headed to breakfast and neither Noah nor I were too excited about breakfast.  We are typically served arroz con leche (rice with warm milk)...YUM!!!  Although Noah doesn't like that either, something about having issues with the texture.  Anyway, today's breakfast was corn flakes with trigo (a wheat and flower mixture) and warm water.  I'm not a fan of corn flakes, or trigo, or warm water in my cereal...so we decided to take a few bites and hand it over to the medium boys since we knew that we'd be taking quite a few kids to the store throughout the day today and I didn't want to overeat.  The medium boys who received our bowls were SO excited...probably because they don't get this dish, they only get the trigo.  We are served what the toddlers eat for each meal, which sometimes (especially for breakfast) is a little different than what everyone else eats.

From Left to Right: Gibran, Noah, Cristopher, LoriAnn, Michell, Luisito (Selvin), and Luis David

After breakfast, I walked back to the room to get ready for the day.  Noah went right to the medium boys house.  He had decided to bring Gibran to church.  He's thinking of sponsoring Gibran, especially since the boy he chose to sponsor last year (Marlon) is no longer here.  I had already asked Michell to sit with us at church while we were at breakfast (she works in the kitchen) and last night had asked permission for Luis David and Luisito to sit with us at the service and go to the 'tienda' with us afterward.

After church, we took all of these kids except for Michell to the 'tienda'.  Michell had to get back to the kitchen to start working on serving lunch, but I had made arrangements to take her to the 'tienda' after lunch.  At the 'tienda', all of the kiddos got 'churros' (chips) and a soda.  Luis David and I chatted about his plans for after graduation and how he'd like to study out in Roatan.  He doesn't yet have a plan on how to get out there, but we are going to work with Elvia to help him get out there to study to become a chef, and later he wants to study English.  What better place than out in Roatan???  I have heard that it's an island dedicated to tourism, especially to those from the States.  I am hoping he can find a job in the restaurant business, even if it's just mopping floors or busing tables, just to help make ends meet so he can study.

Noah took off with Gibran and Cristopher for the medium boys house after about an hour or so.  Noah was bored at the 'tienda', however it seems like the 2 boys found their house WAY more boring and really didn't want to go there.  But they all went anyway.

When the kids were heading to the Comedor for lunch, we decided to wrap our conversation up so Luisito and Luis David could go to lunch as well.  After lunch, I headed to our room to change quickly and then went back to the Comedor to pick up Michell.  We had made arrangements for me to spend time with her between 12 and 2pm.  We headed to the 'tienda' for an hour and chatted, then headed to the hotel so I could show her a couple of pictures of our family that were on the computer, and finally ended up at the big girls house so she could spend a little time with Coco before taking her back to the Comedor to start working on supper preparations.

After dropping her off at the Comedor, I headed across the road to pick up Julissa to take her to the store to chat.  We chatted about a lot of things.  She is hoping to learn enough English to become a translator some day.  She said that she got a 99% in her technology class and thought she was one of the most intelligent students in the class (behind Oscar, who she reported was the most intelligent).  It was fun chatting with Julissa about past years and her dreams.  Time went by really quickly and we saw people heading to supper, so I had to drop her off at the Comedor.  I ate supper with Noah and he went back with the medium boys to play on the trampoline and watch the Lego movie in Spanish.  I headed to Michell's house to chat with her some more before deciding to head back to our house for the evening.

I guess the excitement for our neighbors for the evening was when the electricity went out (we were already in our room), a tarantula came out onto our shared porch.  It was big and black, and Lourdes told them it was poisonous.  When Chris killed it, it was evident that the tarantula had babies (EEEWWW).  They told Noah that they had thought we were already sleeping, so they didn't call for him to come and check it out.  I'm glad that they didn't call us out to see it!

If I didn't mention it yet this year, the power goes out frequently here.  Sometimes it's out for a few minutes, sometimes it's out for a few days...although that hasn't happened in a few years.  It's just a way of life and we have to get used to it.