A First for Me!

    I wasn't planning on my 1:30am trip to the bathroom to be when I got up permanently for the day, but that is how it ended up.  As I came back from the bathroom and entered my room, in the semi-darkness (I have a nightlight in the room), I saw something crawling on the floor towards my bed.  Because it was still a bit dark in the room, I approached the black creature just a little bit to try to make it out...a tail and 2 "claws"...yep, it was the first ever live scorpion I have seen down here.  Just like my summer encounters with the once in a great while tarantula in the house, I decided to go get a broom to sweep it out of the house, because Why kill God's creatures?

   When I got back to the room with the broom, the scorpion was no longer visible, so I had to turn on the lights.  Because it was headed towards my bed, I decided to look under my bed.  By that time it had crawled all the way to the wall and was in the crevice where the floor meets the wall.  I took the broom and jammed it into the crevice just to the left of the scorpion and then gave a swift hard sweep quickly to the right, hoping that I would sweep it out into the open area to more easily get it out the door and back into nature.  Well, not only did the scorpion not appear in the open area of the room, it was no longer in that crevice.  I checked the bottom of the broom, not here either.  My only conclusion was that it had now crawled up onto the bed.  Yep, I was now very much awake!

   There was no way I was crawling back into my bed.  So I decided to shower, pack and get ready for my travels home at 1:30am.  When I was completely awake, I pulled the bedding very carefully (never saw the scorpion again) and threw it in the washer.  Because the house didn't have a dryer, when it was done being washed, I hung it carefully over the gates in the kitchen to dry.  I made sure the rest of my suitcase was packed and I was ready to go.  I don't remember much else about the day (as I write this in June 2024), but I did travel home with the team...although my flight out of Comayagua was a bit later than the team's flight.  Obviously I made it home safely and this store will be continued in June!

David and Lydia's Testimony

    This day is my last full day at Emmanuel for spring break.  It is the first time I have ever come here for spring break, but seeing Noah (and all the children and staff) was completely worth it.  I woke, showered, prepared my proffee and oatmeal and then prepped my last 2 classes before heading to the school to teach the last 3 classes for this trip.  I left all of my notes from the week with Profe Jorge and Profe Dayana, so they would know where I left off in the curriculum, and what exactly I did.

   Once again, Noah and I ate lunch with the team and we got to hear David and Lydia's testimony.  This story I had heard a few times before but many, many years ago.  So there have been new stories of children who have arrived since then, whose stories on how they came to the orphanage I have never heard.  For example, one of the toddlers that Kaylyn and I helped take care of last summer was found as a newborn inside of a rubber car tire and another was found in a pile of garbage and ants had already started to feed on her flesh...both of these girls are flourishing now at Emmanuel and so loving!  The main theme that David and Lydia kept saying was "keep on coming back" and there is a GREAT NEED for volunteers here.

   I spent an hour in the afternoon with Oscar in the tienda and treated him, Brenda, Milton and his workers to a soda.  We chatted and laughed quite a bit.  Before leaving the Tienda, I transferred what was left in my account over to Noah so that he could go another few days without having to put his own money in.

   Oscar and I headed to the comedor, so I could say goodbye to Brithany and many of the other children.  The team was also there saying goodbye, many of them crying which is common for many that come in teams as they are saying their goodbyes.  This place just has a beautiful touch of God that touches so many hearts when they come to serve.  At 6pm, Noah and I headed to the Team House for my last supper here, Chicken Tacos.  They were delicious.  We stayed and chatted a bit, but I did need to get back to make sure I could pack everything for tomorrow's journey home.

Instant Oatmeal - A New Thing!

    This morning I got up at 4am to eat breakfast, shower, do some more laundry and then more prep for the math classes.  As all the kids headed to the Comedor just before 6am, I went down as well to give Julissa and Oscar each 2 packets of Instant Apple-Cinnamon oatmeal.  I had brought a bunch down for my breakfasts each morning, but honestly I prefer the maple and the cinnamon and spice flavors better than the apple.  I gave the packets to them and asked them if they had ever had it before, but they responded "no".  So I had to tell them that they just needed to put it in a bowl and then pour boiling water over it, stir it, and let it sit for a bit before eating, waiting for the oats to soften up a bit.  They asked me repeatedly if they had to add anything to it, like sugar.  I said "no", that it was ALL in the packet, minus the water.

   After the Comedor, I went back to the Female Volunteer House to gather up the books and notebook and headed down to the school to start off my day by teaching the 11th grade.  They are learning about exponential equations (something that I had taught them last year, so it went pretty well) and limits.  When it came to the limits, there was a pretty significant error in the book which definitely could set the students back if they used the book examples to study from...so I made sure they knew about this error and made the proper corrections to it.  When the 11th grade class was done, I had just about 2 hours off before the 2nd class of the day, so I headed back to the Female Volunteer House to prep some more for tomorrow's classes.  When it was time for that last class of the day, I headed back to the school and went to the 8th grade classroom to teach them operations with radicals.  When I got to the school, students were walking around learning about different talleres (workshops) that would start up next week in the afternoon.  These taller presentations actually went over into class time, but that is just how these Spanish-speaking countries tend to work.  So, as expected, I began the 8th grade operations with radicals lesson late.  

   After the 8th grade class, I headed up to the Team House to have lunch with the team.  Lashawn was up there to give her testimony after lunch.  Although there were small bits and pieces of her testimony I had heard over the years, the majority of the information was new, so Noah and I stayed up to hear what she had to say.  She is looking for help in the health clinic and eventually for a nurse that will take over what she does.  She wants to know she will leave the orphanage in good hands, when the time comes.

   After Lashawn's testimony, I walked to the school with a team member.  The graduating class was having a "sale" of food, tajaditas, to raise funds for all the costs associated with graduation.  Although I had ordered 2 plates earlier in the week, I wasn't hungry at all due to the big team meal.  So I decided to take both plates to Noah in the wood shop for him to split between himself and Maestro (the man who is in charge of the wood shop).  Maestro was there, so I gave him a plate and a beverage, but Noah was not there, so I proceeded to walk to the small boys house, where Dilver came running out and I greeted him by saying, "If you are hungry you can take these tajaditas and this juice...and then the other bag of tajaditas is for a friend who is hungry."  He shook his head excitedly, grabbed them, said "Thank you!" and ran back to the Small Boys House.

   I spent the rest of the day getting tomorrow's 3 lessons done, eating dinner with the team, and then retiring to the Female Volunteer House for the night where I ended up falling asleep early.

Snacks for the Toddler House

    At some point during the night, the power came back on which allowed me to do a load of laundry after getting up, showering and eating.  There is no dryer in the Female Volunteer House, so I just hung all of the clothes over the bunk beds in the room I am in to air dry throughout the day.  I am thankful it is the dry season because I do remember when I lived in Mexico during the wet season and had no dryer that sometimes my clothes would start to smell musty because they never really dried.

   Noah left to take the special needs boys to breakfast, so while he was gone, I wrote a blog and a half online.  I uploaded the first day that I was behind and fully intended to finish the second half of the next blog this evening to upload.  Noah had told me that I didn't really need to get a SIM card for my phone (for internet purposes) this week because he could just create a hotspot with his phone for me to get online.  The pro to this is that I am saving money...but the con is that I am at the mercy of when Noah is actually in the house, and honestly I get tired pretty easily at night.  So getting behind on the blogs is going to be expected this week.

   Today there weren't any classes at school.  The teachers had their inservice in town, so that left the kids to either work or be in their houses.  I decided to use a few hours of the day to prep for the 5 classes I will be teaching on Thursday and Friday...but then the remainder of the day was reserved for going to the Toddler House to play with Brithany.  On the way to the Toddler House, I stopped by the Tienda to buy chips for each of the teen girls and Dunia (the one in charge of the Toddler House) as well as some mini jello cups for the toddlers.  I stopped by their actual house first (knowing the toddlers would be in the Chosa and not the house) to give the chips to those big girls that were cleaning.  Then I headed over to the Chosa to give the rest of the chips as well as the jello cups to Dunia who made sure everyone got one.  There were enough mini jello cups for each toddler to have two.  Brithany came over by me right away and sat on my lap.  The teen girls put Moana on the TV and we watched that with Brithany sitting on my lap the entire time.

   I took the toddlers to the Comedor for lunch and then walked up by the Team House where they were served chicken soup, rice, a banana, oatmeal cookie and cantaloupe.  Mirna always does such a good job preparing meals for the team!

   I spent the afternoon doing more prep for the remaining 5 classes I have to teach.  I got Thursday's classes all ready and then got a good start to Friday's 3 classes.  In the evening when Noah came back, I uploaded the 2 blogs I caught up on.

Eating with the Team

    Well, as if heading to bed and seeing that huge cockroach wasn't enough...this morning when I woke there was a spider in my shower stall (thank GOD it wasn't a tarantula) and there was a millipede in my room.  So after taking care of the both of them (typically I don't kill God's creatures here, but this morning I wasn't having it), I showered, and got my usual breakfast of oatmeal and proffee.  I then set myself to finalize the math lessons for today and work more on the lessons for this upcoming week.  I got into Thursday's 11th grade math lesson (reviewing exponential functions and their graphs and beginning the lesson on limits) and got so into what I was doing, that when I checked my watch I realized I had lost track of time and that I was supposed to be in the school 20min prior teaching.  I felt terrible and hurried to pack all the books, writing utensils and notebook into my backpack and get to the school as quickly as possible.

   The teacher was just beginning to write the notes to the lesson on the board, and thankfully what she was wrapping up writing down was exactly how I was going to start the lesson, but you could tell she hadn't prepared because I was supposed to be there.  Unfortunately in this 9th grade class, because I was 20min late, we didn't get through all the material on quadratic equations that I had planned, but that is okay because we will just carry it over to later in the week's class.  While I was teaching, Noah stopped by to drop off 2 freshly made buns and to let me know that Danielle informed him that Lydia said we were to eat the rest of our meals throughout the week with the team and that lunch today was at noon.

   After the 9th grade math class, the students had recess and I headed by Dayana to finish up the card game.  Because I had caught on, when we began the second game it was easy for me to take the lead from the get-go.  After recess, I headed into the 7th grade classroom where the lesson was on properties in math (commutative, associative, distributive, and so on).  I knew this is would not be a lesson I would enjoy teaching, nor would the students enjoy taking all the notes on this lesson.  Although we got through the table of all the properties, what they mean and examples of each, as well as a few practice problems, we didn't get all the way through the problems I had planned, so will have to continue into our next class on Friday.

   Noah and I headed up to the team house to have lunch with the team.  We met some of the team members, and two girls sat by us as we were eating to ask quite a few questions about becoming a volunteer and what that all entails.  This team is from Georgia and is very nice.  There are even some very young children on this trip.

   After lunch I headed back to the Volunteer House to prep for Thursday's lessons.  I knew that the 11th grade mathematics lessons were going to be challenging for me, especially since the book had some pretty significant errors in it and I am not all that brushed up on my pre-calculus limits.  When my brain got tired of the math, I decided to take a break and head down to the store to get a California juice (blackberry and grape) as well as sodas for Oscar and Julissa.  I took the sodas to the kitchen and chatted with Oscar and Julissa for a while and then headed to the Team House with Noah for supper.

   Prior to supper, the power went out and the generator at the Team House was out of gas, so Noah and I held flashlights and helped to serve the team as they went through the dining area in the dark.  There was rice, pork, pico de gallo, black beans, fried plantains, fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple), and vanilla cake.  After all the team members were served, Noah and I served ourselves and I went out to the gazebo to eat and chat with the girls who work in the Team House kitchen before heading back to the Volunteer House for the night.  

   Since the power was still out (meaning no fans as well), I decided to head to bed.  It was a rough night's sleep since the guards who work here at the orphanage checked our doors multiple times throughout the night to ensure our house was locked.  But the big metal doors banged so loudly that it almost seemed as if someone was trying to get in.  I think I woke about 3 times, sweating, hearing the loud noises of the doors being checked, and then going to the bathroom, before I slept the rest of the night.  I am guessing it was at that point that the electricity (and fans) came back on and put me into a more deep sleep.

SOH CAH TOA

   This morning I woke at 4:15am, took a shower, and then made myself some cinnamon and spice instant oatmeal and proffee (coffee with vanilla flavored protein added in).  I had brought enough packets (and extras) of oatmeal to eat breakfast each morning while I am here.  The rest I will most likely leave with Oscar and Julissa, who work in the kitchen, since Noah doesn't care for oatmeal.  His breakfasts have consisted of ChocoArroz, which is kind of like a cross between coco puffs and coco krispies with marshmallows added to it.

   I went to the school this morning to check in and see if they needed my help.  Profe Jorge was there and immediately put me in with the 10th graders.  He said that I could either do a review of quadratic equations since they had just finished with that last week, or I could begin the next week's lessons: Trigonometry.  The very first lesson was an introduction all 6 trigonometric functions: sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant, cosecant (which are called seno, coseno, tangente, cotangente, secante, cosecante in Spanish).  We use the acronym SOH CAH TOA to learn the sine, cosine and tangent.  Although I won't get into the "why" on that, I will say that the letters "o", "a", and "h" can also easily translate over to Spanish (opuesto, adyacente, hipotenusa).  As soon as I saw that, I decided to show the students that acronym so that they could more easily learn these 3 trig functions.  Once we had practiced enough and mastered them, then we chatted about the other 3 trig functions.  I had fun with this lesson because it is the first time I had ever taught trigonometry down here.

   After the 10th graders, Profe Jorge sent me to the 8th grade class where the teacher said I needed to do a review of radicals...everything from simplifying them to adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing them.  I noticed that I tackle working with radicals much differently than they do down here, so before I teach this class again on Thursday, I am going to have to brush up on their methods.  Either way, they understood what I was doing, which was good.

   Recess came next, and Dayana asked me if I would like to play a card game with her and her friend during recess.  I said "sure", however they were going to have to teach me the rules as I wasn't familiar with this card game.  Later, when I explained the game to Noah, he said that it was very similar to the American game Gin 13.  We didn't get through all 13 rounds, but the girls told me that we would finish the game tomorrow.  It took me until about round 9ish to figure out how the game worked.  By then, I was losing terribly bad, but since it is a game of numbers, I am confident that I could finagle the game during the last 4-5 rounds so that I wasn't getting completely destroyed.

   After recess, I was sent to the 7th grade room.  Now, I would like to start by saying that I have never, ever in my life taught 7th and 8th graders.  I have purposefully avoided the middle school in the United States.  Where most teachers are required to spend an amount of time at both levels while they are still studying education in the university, I purposefully avoided it up until student teaching when I realized the only way to get out of being in the middle school was to look for a semester long internship at a high school, which is what I did.  Teaching the 7th graders was rough...I am just going to admit that right now.  Kudos to all the middle school teachers out there, because it certainly takes a special person to deal with this crowd.  I had to get through multiplying rational numbers: positive and negative, fractions, mixed numbers and decimals.  And all this in only an hour and 20 minutes.

   When that class was over, it was time to head to lunch, where we were served beef and potato salad.  After lunch, I got my teaching assignment for the week.  I would be teaching a total of 10 classes at 5 different levels, from 7th grade up through 11th grade.  I got the books for the courses and immediately headed back to the Volunteer House to start prepping for the classes.  Good thing I brought a notebook and some writing utensils.  The only thing I didn't have was my own SIM card for my phone to access internet, so if there were any hiccups along the way of prepping, I would have to wait until Noah came back from working to use a hotspot from his phone to access internet.

My teaching assignment for the week

   And I did come across some hiccups.  The first class I prepped for went well, but the 2nd and 3rd classes had some major errors in the book.  Good thing I could remember the material for the most part in order to get through that as I wrote my own plans out for the students.  Prepping took me most of the afternoon and evening and I did get everything for Tuesday's class done, as well as a good start to Thursday's class (there are no classes this Wednesday).

   As I got ready to head to bed, I went to the bathroom and found an enormous cockroach in the first bathroom stall that I typically use.  The thing had to have been around 3" long!  I am SO very thankful there are 3 stalls and that I had cleaned them over the weekend, because I just opted to go into a different one.  YUCK!  Way to end my evening.

Easter Sunday!

    Happy Easter to all!  This is the first major holiday I have spent down here at Orphanage Emmanuel.  My goal is to spend a Christmas here, but that may be a few years down the road yet...and this was just by happenstance, since Noah is down here.  This morning I headed to the toddler house to pick up Brithany.  I had bought her 3 dresses on Facebook Marketplace for a total of $8, since I wasn't sure how much she had grown since last fall's sizing charts came out.  Turns out the smallest size fit her perfectly and the other 2 dresses were able to be shared with girls who are a little bit bigger.  She was excited to head to church and behaved perfectly, with a little nap on the church pews after a while.  

   After church, Noah said he would treat us all at the Tienda.  He invited his friends Maycol, Olvin and Alejandro and I brought Brithany and had Noah go pick up Dilver.  Each kid got some chips (called churros here) and either a soda, chocolate milk or juice.  There was a volunteer who had stayed very short term with Noah in the Volunteer House who left 3 pairs of shoes, so Noah gave them to his friends.  Unfortunately Alejandro has extremely tiny feet (size 6), so even the smallest pair was way too big on him.  Noah's 3 friends kept stealing his chocolate milk and his Chokis (chocolate chip cookies like Chips Ahoy, but my kids say they're better) and hiding them.  It was fun to watch the boys be boys.  Dilver (who is 6 years old) kept telling me that they were going to fight, but I knew better.  And each time that Dilver saw which boy took Noah's snacks, he would point to that boy so Noah would know.  Before heading to lunch, we took a picture of Noah and his friends...had to get the silly shots in too!

Left to Right: Olvin, Maycol, Alejandro, Noah

Me and Dilver

Brithany in her new dress with chips

Maycol, Olvin, Noah, Alejandro

   After lunch, Noah made arrangements for us to go visit Moncho, his wife Ana Yanci and their 2 boys Jonathan and Santiago.  It was fun seeing their new house and taking time to catch up from the past bunch of months.  On the way back to Emmanuel, Moncho stopped at Tia Gladis' house.  She asked for me to stop by to visit since she had remembered Alina really well quite a few years ago, when Alina was invited to stay overnight in the girls dorm by Michell.  Tia Gladis was in charge of the night watch of that house that year, so each evening when Alina would go that way to watch TV with the girls and then the night she spent there, Gladis remember very well.  We then stopped by Glenda's on the way back as well and chatted for a quick moment.  Glenda mentioned she liked my earrings, so I just gave them to her under the condition that the next time Noah went into town, she had them on and he would take a picture of the two of them with the earrings on!  I have known Glenda since my first trip down in 2008.  Along with only a few others here, she is definitely a staple to my visits.

   Noah and I had supper in the Comedor and then spent the rest of the night in the house checking vacation spots for him when his 90 day visa is up.  Right now he is leaning towards Cancun, Mexico.