After waking, showering, and drinking my proffee, I updated the blog from yesterday's events. Hoping this "routIine" will become the norm each morning for me, but we will see once I am assigned the math classes I will be teaching. Because many times, I am using my morning to prep for the classes later in the morning...just to keep everything fresh in my head. This morning I chose to stay back at the house and wait on Nora to see if she needed anything or had any questions, etc.
When all was taken care of in the house, I headed to the Toddler House, on the way passing by Dayana who asked me to stop by her. She told me that she wasn't at all understanding her math assignment and showed me what she was learning. The 10th grade is currently learning matrices, which isn't really too bad. I told her that I would help her this weekend, when she was ready to buckle down and work on it. I continued my walk over to the Toddler House, but they were neither in the house nor in the Chosa, so I asked a girl outside the Baby House where they were and she said they were in the Clinic. I needed the steps today on my Fitbit, so I decided to walk all the way back past the Girls Volunteer House and over to the Clinic, however they had just finished their appointments and had already headed back to the Toddler House! So this almost became a game of hide and seek! As I walked back to the Toddler House, I found the toddlers in the yard/playground just in front of the Baby House. So that's where I was for the rest of the morning. Nora accompanied me as well and we sat and chatted with the teens that were responsible for taking care of the toddlers.
While we were there, Morgan (long term volunteer turned staff here, but then headed back to the States a couple of years ago) came to the yard with 3 women and a box of toys. We chatted for quite a bit and she let me know she is now a Spanish teacher back in the States, so we had discussions about teaching in general. It was very nice to be able to see her again! She said her parents were also along on the trip as well as Sarah (another long term volunteer turned staff that eventually returned to the States), so I am very much looking forward to seeing them all. The kiddos really enjoyed the new toys, many of which were electronics and made noises and sounds! Brithany grabbed the toy tool set, and Morgan told her that she could use that to help Papi (David, the founder) when he went out to fix things around Emmanuel. Before lunch, we had the children grab all the toys and take them back to the Toddler House for safe keeping, then we walked to the Comedor and had noodles and tortillas for lunch.
After lunch, the toddlers nap, so I headed back to the Girls Volunteer House to wash clothes. During the morning, Brithany was sitting on my lap and spilled juice all over my pants. We can't have that just sitting around or the pants would be covered in ants within just a few hours (Alina experienced that in her early years here)...so I needed to wash them. There is a new dryer in the house that wasn't here in the spring when I visited Noah, so I used that for all the clothes except the jeans, which I just hung to dry. While I was washing clothes, it began to rain. The rain here comes in spurts, but since it is the rainy season, it's not unusual to have rain every day and multiple times throughout the day.
About quarter to three, I headed back to the Toddler House so that I could walk them to the Comedor. But due to the rains today, they decided to eat supper at the Toddler House and sent some of the "grandes" to go get the supper. While we waited for the supper to come and be served, Nora and I played with the toddlers and their new toys. When it was time for food to be served in the Comedor, Nora and I walked there and the plates consisted of rice, beans and a hard boiled egg. Because I got a little bit sunburned today in the morning out on the playground, I decided to turn in early for the night. I think I may have been in bed about 5:30pm or 6pm and then fast asleep.