Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Recap
It has been a while since I have had time to make it into town and write... So I will just summarize a couple of the events which I felt were the most interesting.
Lice: I know pretty much all of the kids have lice at the orphanage and that a couple of them have ringworms. I am thankfully the only volunteer at this point who does not yet have lice. I use tea tree oil in my conditioner and I wear a scarf around my hair about half of the time. Last week one of the volunteers who work with the kinder kids decided to go through the youngest girl’s hair. She asked me if I wanted to help so I pulled over a chair. Just in picking up one chunk of her hair there were about 50 nits in one little corner. It was one of the more disgusting things I have seen and also very sad. The little girl, Carolina, just sat there while we went through her hair pulling out hundreds of nits without even having to look. I am becoming quite the lice expert, well compared to what I knew before arriving at the orphanage. I went through one of the other volunteer’s hair pulling out some nits a couple of weeks ago and she had only about 30 in her entire head of hair. So comparing her 30 nits, which she thought were a lot, to Carolina’s head is pretty insane. Once more volunteers arrive we plan on having a huge delousing party. But I am currently the only volunteer living at the Hogar for the next 5 weeks so I won’t be able to do anything effective until we get some more volunteers.
First Grade-Soccer Game: The first graders were terrible last week! Wednesday I swear they all agreed before class that they were going to be on their worse behaviour ever! Luckily, Wednesday night was the big game between Honduras and Mexico. Mexico is Honduras’ biggest rival so I am told. The 2 other volunteers and I headed into Ceiba with the local couple we live with to watch the game at a bar. We were told 95 % of the country would be watching this game and that the last time they played Honduras won 2-1 but this game was being played in Mexico so it was huge for Honduras. For the entire week leading up to the game they were selling flags and shirts on the streets and there was just an eager and excited aura in the air. The game was very intense and super exciting to watch but unfortunately Honduras lost 1-2. They were up 1-0 but then Mexico scored 2 back to back goals within 2 minutes of each other. Needless to say the people here were VERY depressed. The man we were with cried, actually shedding tears. We got in the car and he was all chocked up and couldn’t even talk. He took us to another bar to drink away his sorrows and explained that he knows there is corruption in his country, he knows there are bad people and that the government is very corrupt, but he said the one thing that unites Honduras, the one time where all people come together and unite is over futbol (soccer) and that this game was huge for the country. Everyone seemed fine the next day, but everyone did watch the game and was talking about it.
My Home stay: I went to visit my home stay before the game and mentioned I would be in town Friday night because I was catching a bus at 5:15 am to go to San Pedro Sula (the 2nd largest city about 3 hours away). Dona Bertha, my home stay grandma, said I had to come over for dinner and that I could sleep at there house, she insisted. So Friday I showed up around 6 pm and hung out with the family catching up. Dona Bertha made me the most amazing dinner, vegetables simmered in butter, picante sauce she made, chicken broth and salt with white rice and an egg with onion. It was amazing! At about 11 pm she threw 3 mattresses on the floor for all 9 of us to sleep on. It was Dona Bertha, the 58 year old grandma, her 2 daughters, and their 5 kids and me. We all squeezed on the mattresses on the floor and slumbered until I woke up about 4 am to get ready to catch my bus. The night prior my home stay grandma had told me she would drive me to the station since it would still be dark and too dangerous. I was all ready to go, but she wasn’t there and my shoes were gone. I sat around until about 5 am and called her. She said she was on her way and would be there in a minute. I sat around until 6 am (having missed my bus) until she arrived around 6:20am. I would have walked to the bus station or taken a cab but I didn’t have any shoes. She ran into the house with my shoes on apologizing for being late. She gave me my shoes and hurried me into the car and drove me to another station where the chicken buses run (for 1/5 the price!). I jumped on and got to San Pedro Sula on time to welcome Greg. I was unable to get a refund for my ticket but they said I can use if for the next 6 months. My home stay family is great and very accommodating but this is the kind of thing you encounter here on a regular basis. Everything gets put off, nothing is 100%, you have to be able to go with the flow and not expect anything to go perfectly. But it all worked out in the end.
Solo Volunteer: The two other volunteers that were living with me left last week. There are 2 new ones but they are living in the volunteer house about a mile away with other volunteers from another project. Currently I am the only volunteer living at the Hogar. I was actually dreading this but I am enjoying it more than I thought. It gives me more time to interact with the kids and puts more pressure on me to speak Spanish. The next volunteers arrive the first of September so hopefully I will be able to last 5 weeks... I think I will. I get to look forward to renewing my visa in September!!! My plan at this point is to travel with my brother to Belize (you cannot renew a visa in El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Guatemala. You must either go to Belize or Costa Rica. So my plan is to head to Belize with him, stopping in El Salvador and Guatemala on the way and taking a week off. I cannot wait!
I hope all is well with everyone back home.
PS Happy late Birthday Cousin Aaron and Bruce!!!
Lice: I know pretty much all of the kids have lice at the orphanage and that a couple of them have ringworms. I am thankfully the only volunteer at this point who does not yet have lice. I use tea tree oil in my conditioner and I wear a scarf around my hair about half of the time. Last week one of the volunteers who work with the kinder kids decided to go through the youngest girl’s hair. She asked me if I wanted to help so I pulled over a chair. Just in picking up one chunk of her hair there were about 50 nits in one little corner. It was one of the more disgusting things I have seen and also very sad. The little girl, Carolina, just sat there while we went through her hair pulling out hundreds of nits without even having to look. I am becoming quite the lice expert, well compared to what I knew before arriving at the orphanage. I went through one of the other volunteer’s hair pulling out some nits a couple of weeks ago and she had only about 30 in her entire head of hair. So comparing her 30 nits, which she thought were a lot, to Carolina’s head is pretty insane. Once more volunteers arrive we plan on having a huge delousing party. But I am currently the only volunteer living at the Hogar for the next 5 weeks so I won’t be able to do anything effective until we get some more volunteers.
First Grade-Soccer Game: The first graders were terrible last week! Wednesday I swear they all agreed before class that they were going to be on their worse behaviour ever! Luckily, Wednesday night was the big game between Honduras and Mexico. Mexico is Honduras’ biggest rival so I am told. The 2 other volunteers and I headed into Ceiba with the local couple we live with to watch the game at a bar. We were told 95 % of the country would be watching this game and that the last time they played Honduras won 2-1 but this game was being played in Mexico so it was huge for Honduras. For the entire week leading up to the game they were selling flags and shirts on the streets and there was just an eager and excited aura in the air. The game was very intense and super exciting to watch but unfortunately Honduras lost 1-2. They were up 1-0 but then Mexico scored 2 back to back goals within 2 minutes of each other. Needless to say the people here were VERY depressed. The man we were with cried, actually shedding tears. We got in the car and he was all chocked up and couldn’t even talk. He took us to another bar to drink away his sorrows and explained that he knows there is corruption in his country, he knows there are bad people and that the government is very corrupt, but he said the one thing that unites Honduras, the one time where all people come together and unite is over futbol (soccer) and that this game was huge for the country. Everyone seemed fine the next day, but everyone did watch the game and was talking about it.
My Home stay: I went to visit my home stay before the game and mentioned I would be in town Friday night because I was catching a bus at 5:15 am to go to San Pedro Sula (the 2nd largest city about 3 hours away). Dona Bertha, my home stay grandma, said I had to come over for dinner and that I could sleep at there house, she insisted. So Friday I showed up around 6 pm and hung out with the family catching up. Dona Bertha made me the most amazing dinner, vegetables simmered in butter, picante sauce she made, chicken broth and salt with white rice and an egg with onion. It was amazing! At about 11 pm she threw 3 mattresses on the floor for all 9 of us to sleep on. It was Dona Bertha, the 58 year old grandma, her 2 daughters, and their 5 kids and me. We all squeezed on the mattresses on the floor and slumbered until I woke up about 4 am to get ready to catch my bus. The night prior my home stay grandma had told me she would drive me to the station since it would still be dark and too dangerous. I was all ready to go, but she wasn’t there and my shoes were gone. I sat around until about 5 am and called her. She said she was on her way and would be there in a minute. I sat around until 6 am (having missed my bus) until she arrived around 6:20am. I would have walked to the bus station or taken a cab but I didn’t have any shoes. She ran into the house with my shoes on apologizing for being late. She gave me my shoes and hurried me into the car and drove me to another station where the chicken buses run (for 1/5 the price!). I jumped on and got to San Pedro Sula on time to welcome Greg. I was unable to get a refund for my ticket but they said I can use if for the next 6 months. My home stay family is great and very accommodating but this is the kind of thing you encounter here on a regular basis. Everything gets put off, nothing is 100%, you have to be able to go with the flow and not expect anything to go perfectly. But it all worked out in the end.
Solo Volunteer: The two other volunteers that were living with me left last week. There are 2 new ones but they are living in the volunteer house about a mile away with other volunteers from another project. Currently I am the only volunteer living at the Hogar. I was actually dreading this but I am enjoying it more than I thought. It gives me more time to interact with the kids and puts more pressure on me to speak Spanish. The next volunteers arrive the first of September so hopefully I will be able to last 5 weeks... I think I will. I get to look forward to renewing my visa in September!!! My plan at this point is to travel with my brother to Belize (you cannot renew a visa in El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Guatemala. You must either go to Belize or Costa Rica. So my plan is to head to Belize with him, stopping in El Salvador and Guatemala on the way and taking a week off. I cannot wait!
I hope all is well with everyone back home.
PS Happy late Birthday Cousin Aaron and Bruce!!!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Hogar Update
I have been at the Hogar now for a little over 3 weeks... What I have learned is that the kids LOVE puzzles, Candyland, and books. My first graders beg me to let them play Candyland (tierra dulce) at the end of class everyday if they all behave (which is rare that they all behave but I usually let them play it anyway). Every night our door, to the volunteer room, gets knocked on about 25 times with kids asking for books and puzzles. It is adorable. There are 20 kids, 10 girls and 10 boys. The oldest girl is 16 while the youngest girl is 6 (but looks and acts 3), the oldest boys are 13 and the youngest boy is 3. The older girls are the hardest to connect with because they are the ones that can remember the abuse whether physical, sexual, mental, and are more reluctant to open up and trust. Many of the kids do not look or act there age due to extreme malnutrition and many of the kids don´t actually know their birthday. There are many siblings, one family of 5 kids and another of 4. Some of the siblings all claim to have the same birthday because they were born in the jungle and then taken on the same day (years later) to the hospital, and given the same birth date.
I do not mean to offend anyone with this next paragraph but if I do please email me and I will try and explain myself a bit more thoroughly... It appears that only the wealthy Hondurans have the luxury of education and the luxury to purchase what an American would consider a necessity. When I first arrived at the Hogar I was appalled with the lack of sanitation and the kids´hygiene. After having been around more Honduran families and seeing more here I am beginning to learn that it isn´t just that the organization is poorly ran, but also there are dramatic cultural differences. The Hogar would be considered a mansion to many Hondurans. It is a very large, one level, modern building. It has a small open courtyard, where the kids bathe and do the dishes, there is a kitchen, 2 bedrooms for the girls, 2 bedrooms for the boys, a bedroom for the couple that lives on site and runs the orphanage (2 Hondurans Julio is 25 and Stacy is 23), a large room for the volunteers, a dinning room, a computer room (not functioning yet, that will be Greg´s job in a couple of weeks), a bathroom for the boys, a bathroom for the girls, 2 bathrooms for the volunteers (only one has a functioning shower), a laundry room, and about 3 poorly ran storage rooms. The building is painted decently, all concrete, with tiled floors. The windows all have screens which is amazing but still makes no sense to me how many bugs make it inside! The last 3 nights I have dreamt about giants bugs crawling through my hair. But thankfully I am the only volunteer at this point whose head has not been infected with lice. Overall after the past couple of weeks I have come to feel lucky for where the kids and I are living. The dogs are still a disgusting issue... But that I will just have to get used to. As far as the kids hygiene it seems to be more of a miscommunication within the Hogar and the organization, everyone says someone else is supposed to be responsible amongst the people who are living on site with paid positions. Two nights ago I told the kids they couldn´t have books or puzzles until they bathed and let me smell them. They each came to me saying they had bathed which of course I didn´t believe because you could see the rings of dirt around their neck. I smelt each one and made told them they couldn´t have a book or puzzle unless they bathed with soap (I found that we do have soap it was just in a locked room that only the director has access to). Last night instead I bathed the 4 youngest boys with soap and put deodorant on each of them. They were clean for about 5 minutes, but that is probably the cleanest they have been in a while. I talked to the other volunteers and we are just going to take turns making sure we get all the little ones bathed properly each night. Oh and we have been brushing their teeth as well. There is a 4 year old whose front teeth are completely rotten brown, luckily it is just his baby teeth... But back to what I was first saying... There is not the education here that there is in the States about hygiene and health. People cannot afford spoons, forks, knives and napkins and as a result people eat with their hands and it is messy. What we consider necessities like cleaning products, soap, shampoo, conditioner, etc are all luxuries to most here. Just having a shower and especially a running toilet here is a luxury. So I will not complain at all about the conditions of the site from now on... There are just some changes that definitely need to be made which should hopefully considering all volunteers, whether they have been on site for 1 week or one year are all in agreement.
Also, it is unfortunate but the people here don´t have the means to become educated on health. Most of the cooked meals have something fried in them with 100% vegetable oil and no one is conscious about working out. The men play soccer, but I haven´t seen one female workout in my almost 2 months here. Also, the wealthier people that can afford food eat lots of it and are largely overweight, while there are many that slave in fields all day and cannot afford food and are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Many families can just afford rice beans and some can afford meat. But fruits and vegetables which are very hard to come by. It is really sad considering the Dole plantations are just about 15 miles away from the Hogar where there are fields of fresh pineapple, but unfortunately most are getting shipped to the U.S. and the locals without money cannot afford them. Also, because you cannot really drink the water here, the majority of people all prefer to spend their money on a beverage with calories considering they are trying to intake as many as possible so they drink coke. With a lack of dentist in the area and with many families here that cannot afford toothbrushes and toothpaste there is another huge issue.
Overall the people here that I have came into contact with have been amazing. A man that works at the gas station saw my friend Bethany and I hitching the other day and offered to help us get a hitch so that we could wait in the shade. We waited with him for about 15 minutes as trucks passed and said that we would go back into the sun. He said he didn´t want us to wait in the sun (it was insanely hot that day) so he took out his wallet and offered to pay for our bus fare. Another family a grandmother and her daughter offered to make me lunch and then take a cab with me insisting they pay. My first time hiking up to my favorite swimming hole with my home stays family, they bought me pan dulce, sweet bread, and wouldn´t let me pay for it. Also, they let Bethany and I stay at their house without charging us for the room. Pretty much every hitch we have had has ended up in us becoming friends with the driver and learning something new about the area and offered to show us around. I have found all this hospitality amazing considering I am unemployed at the moment but feel wealthier than even the richest people I have come into contact with here.
Sorry this is so random. Nothing really interesting has happened in the past 2 weeks, just a lot of hanging out with the kids, trying to make progress with the first graders, helping the cooks in the kitchen, playing soccer with the kids, spending time with the other volunteers, talking with the guards, etc. This weekend we are going to try and cook a meal for the kids or take them somewhere (the other 2 volunteers and I) and go hiking again to my favorite swimming hole.
I hope everyone is doing well.
I do not mean to offend anyone with this next paragraph but if I do please email me and I will try and explain myself a bit more thoroughly... It appears that only the wealthy Hondurans have the luxury of education and the luxury to purchase what an American would consider a necessity. When I first arrived at the Hogar I was appalled with the lack of sanitation and the kids´hygiene. After having been around more Honduran families and seeing more here I am beginning to learn that it isn´t just that the organization is poorly ran, but also there are dramatic cultural differences. The Hogar would be considered a mansion to many Hondurans. It is a very large, one level, modern building. It has a small open courtyard, where the kids bathe and do the dishes, there is a kitchen, 2 bedrooms for the girls, 2 bedrooms for the boys, a bedroom for the couple that lives on site and runs the orphanage (2 Hondurans Julio is 25 and Stacy is 23), a large room for the volunteers, a dinning room, a computer room (not functioning yet, that will be Greg´s job in a couple of weeks), a bathroom for the boys, a bathroom for the girls, 2 bathrooms for the volunteers (only one has a functioning shower), a laundry room, and about 3 poorly ran storage rooms. The building is painted decently, all concrete, with tiled floors. The windows all have screens which is amazing but still makes no sense to me how many bugs make it inside! The last 3 nights I have dreamt about giants bugs crawling through my hair. But thankfully I am the only volunteer at this point whose head has not been infected with lice. Overall after the past couple of weeks I have come to feel lucky for where the kids and I are living. The dogs are still a disgusting issue... But that I will just have to get used to. As far as the kids hygiene it seems to be more of a miscommunication within the Hogar and the organization, everyone says someone else is supposed to be responsible amongst the people who are living on site with paid positions. Two nights ago I told the kids they couldn´t have books or puzzles until they bathed and let me smell them. They each came to me saying they had bathed which of course I didn´t believe because you could see the rings of dirt around their neck. I smelt each one and made told them they couldn´t have a book or puzzle unless they bathed with soap (I found that we do have soap it was just in a locked room that only the director has access to). Last night instead I bathed the 4 youngest boys with soap and put deodorant on each of them. They were clean for about 5 minutes, but that is probably the cleanest they have been in a while. I talked to the other volunteers and we are just going to take turns making sure we get all the little ones bathed properly each night. Oh and we have been brushing their teeth as well. There is a 4 year old whose front teeth are completely rotten brown, luckily it is just his baby teeth... But back to what I was first saying... There is not the education here that there is in the States about hygiene and health. People cannot afford spoons, forks, knives and napkins and as a result people eat with their hands and it is messy. What we consider necessities like cleaning products, soap, shampoo, conditioner, etc are all luxuries to most here. Just having a shower and especially a running toilet here is a luxury. So I will not complain at all about the conditions of the site from now on... There are just some changes that definitely need to be made which should hopefully considering all volunteers, whether they have been on site for 1 week or one year are all in agreement.
Also, it is unfortunate but the people here don´t have the means to become educated on health. Most of the cooked meals have something fried in them with 100% vegetable oil and no one is conscious about working out. The men play soccer, but I haven´t seen one female workout in my almost 2 months here. Also, the wealthier people that can afford food eat lots of it and are largely overweight, while there are many that slave in fields all day and cannot afford food and are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Many families can just afford rice beans and some can afford meat. But fruits and vegetables which are very hard to come by. It is really sad considering the Dole plantations are just about 15 miles away from the Hogar where there are fields of fresh pineapple, but unfortunately most are getting shipped to the U.S. and the locals without money cannot afford them. Also, because you cannot really drink the water here, the majority of people all prefer to spend their money on a beverage with calories considering they are trying to intake as many as possible so they drink coke. With a lack of dentist in the area and with many families here that cannot afford toothbrushes and toothpaste there is another huge issue.
Overall the people here that I have came into contact with have been amazing. A man that works at the gas station saw my friend Bethany and I hitching the other day and offered to help us get a hitch so that we could wait in the shade. We waited with him for about 15 minutes as trucks passed and said that we would go back into the sun. He said he didn´t want us to wait in the sun (it was insanely hot that day) so he took out his wallet and offered to pay for our bus fare. Another family a grandmother and her daughter offered to make me lunch and then take a cab with me insisting they pay. My first time hiking up to my favorite swimming hole with my home stays family, they bought me pan dulce, sweet bread, and wouldn´t let me pay for it. Also, they let Bethany and I stay at their house without charging us for the room. Pretty much every hitch we have had has ended up in us becoming friends with the driver and learning something new about the area and offered to show us around. I have found all this hospitality amazing considering I am unemployed at the moment but feel wealthier than even the richest people I have come into contact with here.
Sorry this is so random. Nothing really interesting has happened in the past 2 weeks, just a lot of hanging out with the kids, trying to make progress with the first graders, helping the cooks in the kitchen, playing soccer with the kids, spending time with the other volunteers, talking with the guards, etc. This weekend we are going to try and cook a meal for the kids or take them somewhere (the other 2 volunteers and I) and go hiking again to my favorite swimming hole.
I hope everyone is doing well.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Honduras and 2 Weeks at The Hogar
I do not know if I have mentioned it already, but it is beautiful here! La Ceiba is nicknamed La Novia de Honduras, which translates to the girlfriend of Honduras. Everyday regardless of the weather or how I am feeling I can just walk outside and look at the amazing mountains and see the ocean and instantly feel better knowing I am in a natural paradise. The beach is about five miles from the base of the mountains, if that, and then it is an endless jungle. The jungle here is amazing, filled with these lovely red and yellow flowers and all kids of different lush trees. There are multiple rivers running through the jungle but my favorite spot is hiking up this dirt road for about 2 hours to a place called Las Mangas where there is a little swimming hole. It is priceless. There are huge white rocks to lay on and jump off of into the river, a little swimming hole with a little natural rock water slide that is about 3 feet. My home stay family showed it to me and I went back yesterday with my two roommates which turned out to be an interesting night... Mom, don´t read beyond this point. We got to the base of the mountain around 5 and started trying to catch a hitch back to the Hogar. We finally caught one and they had to make a stop that lasted about 10 minutes and we were on our way. They were not going all the way to our village but we thought it would be better than nothing. They dropped us off around 6:30 at their stop which was about 4 miles from our village. We tried hitching while walking but it was dusk and no cars were stopping. The sun dropped within 10 minutes and we ended up walking the four miles in the dark to our village. It was the first time I had been outside of the orphanage at night, unless in Ceiba in a group. It was lovely. The stars were amazing and there are fireflies everywhere here! We all lived and ended up having a great day and walking all together about 10 miles which we felt allowed us the privilege of coming to town today for some ice cream which was delicious! Mom, again do not read on... Also, the other night we were in our room, my 2 roommates and I and we were watching a movie on the Hogar´s TV and we heard gunshots right outside of our window. I didn´t think anything of it and I looked down and all of my roommates were laying on the floor. I asked if those were real gunshots and they said yes. So I got on the floor as well. We turned off all of our lights and looked outside. Our armed guard was out of site and we couldn´t get his attention yelling out our window. We walked to get the head Tio and Tia to see if they knew what was going on... They opened there bedroom door and told us that the two shots were warning rounds to scare off potential robbers in the neighborhood. They told us that they wanted to let everyone in the village know we did in fact have an armed guard and that it was a planned drill. They apologized for not telling us. We went back to our room and laughed for about 15 minutes at the fact that we are warned about fire drills in the states and here we hadn´t been warned about our armed guard letting off a couple of rounds right outside of our window.
OK mom, now you can read on...
Life at the Hogar has either gotten better or I have just been lowering my standards and been adjusting... I love my four students. They are all adorable in their own way, but Angelo is my little angel. Another volunteer loves him as well so she keeps telling me I am going to have to fight her for him. He lost his tooth last night so she put 10 lempiras under his pillow. He woke up so happy about it and within 2 hours one of the other kids had taken the money. That is one of the things that is hard here at the orphanage. The kids have no respect for each other or the volunteers. They do respect their head tio and tia, the couple that is in charge. But other than that they don`t show much respect for their possessions or the other kids and they are inconsistent in the respect they show for the volunteers. They don´t have to work for anything and because of that they haven´t learned what it is like to work hard, earn money, and purchase something that you need to keep in good condition. They are given all of their clothes and all of their possessions and just trash them. We have to control all of the books they read, all of the puzzles they use, and toys they borrow. This means they knock on our door at all hours asking, tia, yo quiero rompecabeza, tia yo quiero un libro. This is something we have been talking about to try and work on so that they have an idea what it is like to work or create something and earn something in return.
I went swimming with all of the kids Friday after class and they acted totally different. None of them fought, they all got along, they were all happy, they were all excited to play and talk and everyone had a blast. It was a wonderful experience to see them away from the orphanage. I was talking to another volunteer about maybe trying to talk with all of the kids about something special they would like to do and rotate and take the kids in pairs or one at a time away from the orphanage to do something that would be memorable for them. It is hilarious though, I was asking the kids what their favorite meals were, and each of them said beans and flour tortillas. This is pretty much what we have to eat every single day at the orphanage. The food is decent, but I was thinking they would pick something they rarely get to have. The food at the orphanage doesn´t compare to the food from my home stay but it is pretty good and definitely edible. I helped the cooks our Friday because one cook got fired for stealing food so they are short handed. At first one of the cooks was a bit irritated because she gave me the job of manning the frying pan and I was spilling some of the oil while flipping the pastelitos. But I eventually I got the hang of it. After manning a frying pan in a kitchen in Honduras you lose about 5 pounds in water weight from sweating so much. I was soaked. But it was wroth it. I am learning some good cooking tips and the food is really good. Although at the orphanage there is a huge lack of fruits and vegetables. It is mostly beans, tortillas, means and rice. Oh and the sweetest coffee every which is really good and served to all of the kids which doesn´t help their already hyper behaviors.
I am trying to think of what else to update everyone on... We brought it up to the director that the kids need proper showers and we need to hire a plumber to fix the existing showers and we were told it was an issue with money because the organization is currently suffering. Oh, and I am going to a soccer game on Wednesday at the stadium in La Ceiba with the head tio and the other volunteers. I am so excited about that. It is Victoria, one of the Ceiba teams and Olympia, a team from San Pedro Sula. It is cheaper for women to go to the games, it is only $2.50. Hmmm... The weather is lovely. It rains maybe two or three days a week, but not for long. The rest of the time it is insanely humid, sunny, and perfect. After hiking all day Saturday and being gone all day I was so excited when we finally got back to the orphanage because I missed the kids, my students especially. I counted 35 bugbites on my body today when I was swimming and that is with wearing bug spray about half the time and sleeping with a mosquito net. Alright I need to head back to make some lesson plans for tomorrow.
Ok, I hope all is well with everyone back home. Take care, eat lots of raspberries for me and I will talk with you all later.
OK mom, now you can read on...
Life at the Hogar has either gotten better or I have just been lowering my standards and been adjusting... I love my four students. They are all adorable in their own way, but Angelo is my little angel. Another volunteer loves him as well so she keeps telling me I am going to have to fight her for him. He lost his tooth last night so she put 10 lempiras under his pillow. He woke up so happy about it and within 2 hours one of the other kids had taken the money. That is one of the things that is hard here at the orphanage. The kids have no respect for each other or the volunteers. They do respect their head tio and tia, the couple that is in charge. But other than that they don`t show much respect for their possessions or the other kids and they are inconsistent in the respect they show for the volunteers. They don´t have to work for anything and because of that they haven´t learned what it is like to work hard, earn money, and purchase something that you need to keep in good condition. They are given all of their clothes and all of their possessions and just trash them. We have to control all of the books they read, all of the puzzles they use, and toys they borrow. This means they knock on our door at all hours asking, tia, yo quiero rompecabeza, tia yo quiero un libro. This is something we have been talking about to try and work on so that they have an idea what it is like to work or create something and earn something in return.
I went swimming with all of the kids Friday after class and they acted totally different. None of them fought, they all got along, they were all happy, they were all excited to play and talk and everyone had a blast. It was a wonderful experience to see them away from the orphanage. I was talking to another volunteer about maybe trying to talk with all of the kids about something special they would like to do and rotate and take the kids in pairs or one at a time away from the orphanage to do something that would be memorable for them. It is hilarious though, I was asking the kids what their favorite meals were, and each of them said beans and flour tortillas. This is pretty much what we have to eat every single day at the orphanage. The food is decent, but I was thinking they would pick something they rarely get to have. The food at the orphanage doesn´t compare to the food from my home stay but it is pretty good and definitely edible. I helped the cooks our Friday because one cook got fired for stealing food so they are short handed. At first one of the cooks was a bit irritated because she gave me the job of manning the frying pan and I was spilling some of the oil while flipping the pastelitos. But I eventually I got the hang of it. After manning a frying pan in a kitchen in Honduras you lose about 5 pounds in water weight from sweating so much. I was soaked. But it was wroth it. I am learning some good cooking tips and the food is really good. Although at the orphanage there is a huge lack of fruits and vegetables. It is mostly beans, tortillas, means and rice. Oh and the sweetest coffee every which is really good and served to all of the kids which doesn´t help their already hyper behaviors.
I am trying to think of what else to update everyone on... We brought it up to the director that the kids need proper showers and we need to hire a plumber to fix the existing showers and we were told it was an issue with money because the organization is currently suffering. Oh, and I am going to a soccer game on Wednesday at the stadium in La Ceiba with the head tio and the other volunteers. I am so excited about that. It is Victoria, one of the Ceiba teams and Olympia, a team from San Pedro Sula. It is cheaper for women to go to the games, it is only $2.50. Hmmm... The weather is lovely. It rains maybe two or three days a week, but not for long. The rest of the time it is insanely humid, sunny, and perfect. After hiking all day Saturday and being gone all day I was so excited when we finally got back to the orphanage because I missed the kids, my students especially. I counted 35 bugbites on my body today when I was swimming and that is with wearing bug spray about half the time and sleeping with a mosquito net. Alright I need to head back to make some lesson plans for tomorrow.
Ok, I hope all is well with everyone back home. Take care, eat lots of raspberries for me and I will talk with you all later.
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