Don't Yell "Fire" In A Crowded Theater

Updates...I know you all live for them. I live for writing them and uploading pictures so that you all may feel connected with us while we're here. I've been making more time to write them since I believe it is important (especially for the family that wonders what the heck we're up to down here). I really don't have a whole lot to say today, but at least a couple of interesting things have happened in the course of the past day and a half.

Yesterday (Saturday--and by "Saturday" I mean March 28th, 2009 since we aren't more than 1 hour difference from California), we woke up to feed and groom the horses before our morning horse lessons. Of course the horses looked spectacular after a nice comb through and brushing. On a side note, Wade said that they look the best they ever have through a dry season. I guess we must be doing something right then. John decided to get a little bonding time in with the colt since he'll be working with them more often as soon as we leave. We had 3rd grade girls on Saturday and they were certainly a handful to say the least. Some of the girls have been very good with the horses, but this was not one of those groups of girls. One girl decided to bring her soccer ball with her to keep herself entertained. The water trough in the pasture has come to look pretty nasty and it would seem that it was in need of a cleaning. I asked Wade if we could borrow his pressure washer in the morning to which he said that it would be available to use in the afternoon. I picked it up, got it ready to use, and after it ran for about 30 seconds, it decided to quit on me. Unfortunately after many attempts to restart it and checking all the fluid levels as well as the air filter, I gave up. I even had one of the junior staff members come out to look at it, but they couldn't figure it out either. I ended up using the shovel to try and scrape out the algae along the bottom. It looks a lot better now, but I'll have to give the pressure washer another try next weekend.


When Lauren and I were walking home from church this morning, we saw a lot of darker smoke in the sky in a spot that seemed closer to the orphanage than the usual trash burns. As we got a little closer to home, we could see tall flames burning the very dry field next to the horse pasture and corn crop on the edge of the property. We had a staff member radio it in to Wade while we continued on over to check it out. After a bit of research, we found out that there have been a lot of wild fires here lately. We just left California where wildfires were threatening Lauren's mom's house this past fall and now they are threatening the orphanage here! Honduras is in the middle of their dry season, so fires are very common since everyone burns their trash here. When we arrived at the property's edge, we could see that cows were grazing even with the fires burning about 200-yards behind them. We almost had free hamburgers for lunch!



As Lauren and I were on our way to lunch this afternoon and we approached the dam, we saw one of the illusive iguanas that we've seen diving into the pond over the past week. I had my camera with me since I had just been taking pictures of the fires, so it was the perfect opportunity to snap a pictures to share with all of you! Before I could get too close to him, he jumped into the water in a hurry to escape the clutches of danger. On our way back we saw one of our turtle friends sun bathing on the dam. Its hard to see him because he is so small, but he is right above the dark water spot on the damn. You can also see the orphanage cows grazing in the little valley behind him...what a happy family they have become.




While we were getting lunch at the tienda (store) near the entrance to the orphanage, Lauren was looking in the gift shop and found the coolest little bracelet. She showed an interest in it and I practically demanded that she buy it for herself since she liked it. I usually like accessories on Lauren and I like them more when they have a cool story behind them. For example, Lauren also has braclet that she bought in Africa when she went to Botswana in 2007 with Sandals. Now she has a braclet from Honduras when she went there with her awesome husband in 2009. Sounds like a new tradition has been born.



BREAKING NEWS:

While cleaning the dishes after dinner tonight, I found this guy in our shower! I don't know why they have gotten so brave, but they are walking on the walls and in the shower. I would hate to have Stinky crawl up my leg while I'm trying to shower. I still can't believe how loud they can be in the middle of the night, although they're nothing compared to the new found fly-like bug that has been introduced into our daily lives.

I Love Chicks!

Well, the current team that is visiting Emmanuel from Union University has been doing various jobs around the orphanage, including painting, playing with the kids, and putting up new signs. The farm was previously unlabeled, but thanks to their hard work, we now have a sign that marks the entrance to the farm! Its kinda cool because we live on the "farm side" of the property, so now we have a sign to look at every time we walk home!




Today, as we walked past the sign, we heard a lot of little chirping. If you remember from our previous blog where we talked about "chickens running with their heads cut off", Emmanuel slaughtered every chicken on the property in order to have food for the kitchens. What could this noise be? As we walked in the door to the chicken coup, we could see that they had purchased around 300 baby chicks! They were put into a room that was about 10' x 30' with heat lamps to keep them warm. A large group of them were trying to run out of the room, so Wade (the staff member in charge of the farm) was trying to keep them inside. From the sound Lauren made when she saw those little guys, you could tell that her heart just melted. We took a lot of pictures of them since we had taken a lot of pictures when the older ones had their heads cut off a couple of weeks ago--it was only right to take pictures of them alive as well (plus they're adorable). Lauren even had the opportunity to hold one in her little hand! When it came time to put them in a make-shift corral, John was picking them up by the handfuls! Wade claims that until a baby chick has had a drink of water, they are virtually indestructible...unless you step on one of course.


Later on while Lauren and I were sitting on the couch in our living room, "stinky" pooped on Lauren's foot! We know that he has always pooed in the corners and even on the bathroom sink, but now we are not even safe sitting on our own couch! Lauren was thoroughly disgusted when the warm poo landed on her foot, but after vocalizing her disgust the next thing she said was, "Leo, get the camera...we need to document this!" Lauren is such a trooper.


The power also went out while I was typing this which can be a very scary thing when everything is completely dark and the only sound you hear are the crickets and giant bugs through the open slats on the window. It came back on after about 5 minutes, so we're back to normal again. Life goes on.


I took a picture of the little pond by our house that we walk by every day. Its a pretty cool little man-made pond that the water from the kitchens drains into every morning, afternoon, and evening. Last week I could have sworn that I saw an alligator jump into the pond when we were walking to the school after lunch. As it turns out, it was an iguana! I had no idea that iguanas were able to swim under water. It freaked me out, but after I found out what it really was, I was okay with it. A few days later we saw TWO jump in the pond at the same time while we were about to cross the dam. I hear they're tasty...if you can catch one.




THIS JUST IN!!! While I was sitting here reviewing the blog with Lauren, Stinky pooed on me! Can you believe the nerve of that guy? We give him shelter from the elements and he poos on us instead of thanking us! I'm insulted. I hope you sleep with one eye open tonight Stinky...

Muchas Cosas!

I know its been a while since I wrote in here last, but things have been busy and with our friends Abe, Rowe, and Cristin visiting us over the weekend, I didn't have a chance to post an update about our lives. Not a whole lot has changed. We're still working in our assigned tasks in the school and with the horses. One morning a couple of weeks ago, a boy in the school became very sick and needed someone to take him up to the clinic to see Karelia (the nurse) and I was selected. He was from one of the first grade classes and didn't look like he felt too good at all! From what my sources tell me, he threw up all over his pants and was then asked to sit outside his class until someone could come and get him. When I arrived at the clinic with him, there was no one there, and after a quick phone call I found out that he needed to sit outside the principal's office until someone could get to him. He just sat and waited. It was sad.

Speaking of sick children, Emmanuel had a boy that was staying in the clinic 24 hours a day which meant that at least two volunteers had to be with him at all times. What better reason to hold a meeting! In our meeting we discussed how it was the responsibility of every volunteer to take a shift in the clinic. They passed around a sign up sheet, so Lauren and I filled in our names for a couple of shifts. The boy's name is Byron and he is 12 years old, however he looks like a 7 year old, acts like a toddler, and cannot speak. His mother is severely mentally handicaped and extremely poor so he was neglected his whole life. At some point a couple of weeks ago, the older boy that was taking care of him every day decided to wack him over the head with some sort of bar. Most of the volunteers believe he suffered a concusion, but no diagnosis was ever made. He slept for a couple of days and refused to eat or drink (very unlike his normal character). After a couple of days, he began to return to his usual habbits and began eating and drinking a little at a time. One time when Lauren and I were in there with him, he was sitting across the room eating his beans and rice while Lauren did some editing work on the Emmanuel blog. All of the sudden, she had a chewed up clump of beans sitting in front of her on the laptop...Byron had thrown his chewed up food at her. Needless to say, she was shocked for a moment but then couldn't stop laughing about it since it was pretty funny. We changed his diaper and showered him on two different occasions because he is unable to do it himself. The second time it happened, he decided to walk in his diaper and track poo across the floor. Lauren gladly offered to clean it up while I showered his butt along with the rest of him. From then on, I have been smelling a random hint of poo everywhere I go--I believe I am suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I must not be ready to be a parent yet.

We had a visitor at the horse pasture for a few days about a week ago. We're not sure what his name was, but he certainly had a desire to be loved and have horse friends to chat with. For three days in a row he would stand at the fence that separates the horse pasture from the field outside the orphanage. When we brought the horses in to eat, he would walk over to the stables to eat the grass next to them. The other horses appeared to be curious about their new found friend. The colt even watched him while he ate, but appeared to be a bit annoyed with him there. I went over to check him out and say hello, but upon closer inspection, I found that he was covered in ticks! Maybe I got one of my ticks from him...gross. I decided to leave the horse where I found him and I returned to the stables to finish taking care of our horses.

One day when Lauren was in class she was looking through some of the flash cards of words the last team left for the class. The class is supposed to be not only learning about math, science, social studies, and Spanish, they are also supposed to be learning character development. In that, they will be teaching them how to deal with bullies, how to take care of themselves, etc. Lauren found a flash card that peaked my interest. I really don't recall at what age I learned this word, or what the context was, but I do know that this is a word that every person needs to know in order to be successful in life--diarrhea! what a great word. Without it, how would a person know what kind of medicine to get in order to fell better? After learning this word, a person can go to any pharmecy and ask for diarrhea medicine.


Our friends from Sandals (from the Honduras '08 team) came to visit us from Friday thru Tuesday. We were excited to see some familiar faces from church! The arrived around 5:15pm on Friday which also happened to be Mikkel and Watson's b-day. Most of the volunteers and staff were in the volunteer pavilion eating Danish pizza, cake and cookies. Norman (the Honduran taxi driver for Emmanuel) drove us all over to our house so they could drop off their bags and settle in. Lauren and I decided to make them spaghetti and cheese bread for dinner so we could relax and catch up. John came over after a little while and partook of our fancy dinner. We spent Saturday morning doing horse lessons for the special needs children, and grooming the horses later on. After we finished that we changed and went into town to find something "authentic" to eat. We ended up eating in the town square at a stand in the middle of it. We spent a little over a dollar each and each had a fantastic lunch. We swung by the supermercado to pick up some food for their stay and then hiked it back home. Sunday after church, we walked around Emmanuel so they could see the new male volunteer house, as well as the cows and pigs. As it turned out, one of the mama pigs had just given birth to 12 little pigglets and we were the first ones on scene. One of the little piggies was on the wrong side of the pig-pen and was unable to walk back over to the mama and since we couldn't get to them, we had to call someone who could. So far they have all survived and are doing well. On a side note, a mama pig just gave birth to 8 pigglets about a week ago, but she mauled and killed 6 of them. They plan on killing her in about a month.


Abe, Rowe and Cristin spent a good deal of time shaddowing us during their stay here. It was great getting to see them, and it was also great to receive the packages they brought from some fellow Sandalites! We received movies, chocolate, liquid hand soap (which is hard to come by in Guaimaca), Pop-Tarts, granola bars, a dustpan, etc. (thank you Sandy & family, Theresa, and Karen). We also received a collection that was taken for Lauren and I at Sandals College United--my old small group. We were very excited to receive a letter from them as well as a little extra cash. Thank you so much guys, we love you! We should also be receiving 4 packages from my mom, Lauren's mom, and my aunt in Idaho sometime this week. We feel so blessed to have received so much from our friends and family while we're here in Honduras! Thank you all so much--especially Abe, Rowe, and Cristin for being our mules and awesome house guests!

We still have groundwork horse classes as often as the horses have food to eat. We had classes last week and the younger boys seemed to have a good time. We're hoping to get through as many of the grades as we can before we leave so that when Tammy comes back, she can work with the children on the next series of lessons. The children have been anxious to ride the horses, but without proper supervision, we're not letting them ride. We're also taking note of which children enjoy working with and feeding the horses, because they will be the ones that are allowed to ride the horses later. Some only believe that the horses are here for them to ride, but that they don't have a respoinsibility to take care of them as well. That mindset doesn't work for us. They need to show an interest in taking care of them before they can ride them.





Just today, Lauren and I were out there to feed the horses and when I went to open the gate, I saw what looked to be a giant, mutated fly. I don't know if any of our readers have any idea what this thing is, but if you do, please let us know. It had wings and a face like a fly, but it was a little smaller than a perscription medicine bottle...that is huge as far as insects go around here. Maybe it was a fly that was mutated somehow...only God knows.



Today was John's birthday! For those of you that don't know John, he hails from our church in California and was our on team that visited Emmanuel in August of 2008. Today he turned 23 years old and we celebrated it in the volunteer pavilion after our Wednesday night church service. We baked him oatmeal cookies (from a bag that we bought at the supermarket) and also brought our coffee pot to make coffee. Hele, prounounced "hell-uh", (the woman in blue) baked him Bedstefar's skaeg or "Grandpa's Beard" in English, which is a Danish birthday cake that is very delicious and has a merange topping. His girlfriend (Jenny) was also in attendance and is pictured to John's left (your right). They sang him "happy birthday" in Danish--which by the way is a very long song. In America, the happy birthday song is very short because we want to get down to eating some cake and ice cream! In Denmark, they are content just singing and singing some more. Someone then started singing happy birthday in Spanish, but it was short-lived since know one really knows all the words to it. Later, John and Mikkel had a staring contest, and Mikkel won--chalk up another point for Denmark. The contest lasted for about 5 minutes and I'm not sure why John just gave up like he did, but Mikkel was very excited about winning. The Danes taught us a new Danish word--its pronounced "who-guh-lee" and it is used when friends are just hanging out doing nothing. Another word they taught us sounds like "cell-tech" and it means "your welcome." If you wanted to say thank you in Danish, it would sound like "tech." Good times. Oh, and if you want to say "see you later" you say "see see-na" whereas see you tomorrow is, "see see-moan" or "seis" for short. Before we know it Lauren and I will be coming home speaking three languages! I think we'll continue to work on Spanish before we get into learning too much Danish though.

Thats all for now friends and family. We'll have another blog up soon I'm sure...as things develop anyways. Oh, we have internet sitting on our couch in our living room now! You have to sit in the same spot in a certain way, but it works! Yay! That makes writing blogs/e-mails so much easier for us.


Good Day and God speed.

Hasta luego!
See see-na!
See you Later!


"And scene"

When Ticks Attack!

I think this is my 5th tick since we've been here. The sad thing is, I had just taken a shower and had to pull one out of my shoulder too! I can't believe I had two at the same time. My friends Abe, Rowe, and Crisitn are visiting and Abe let me know that you needed to use heat to make the tick release before you pulled it out. Hence the reason we used a match on my neck. It all worked out in the end.

New blog to come...maybe this weekend.

Running Like Chickens With Their Heads Cut Off...

Hello all! What an eventful week it has been indeed—although nothing will top me thinking I might have had malaria and Lauren getting a tick sucking on her neck. I continue my work on the blog/website for Emmanuel in whatever spare time I have. It’s still not ready for the eyes of the world to see, but when it is, you’ll be the third to know. I was given the assignment of updating the actual website for Emmanuel since nothing has been written about the school and the “farm” section also needs a massive overhaul. I spent one afternoon this week taking pictures all around the farm and came across an interesting occurrence that apparently only happens once every few months. Emmanuel bought about 400 baby chicks to raise, get eggs from and then slaughter after a few months. This particular day was the day of the slaughtering—what a treat! They had quite a production line going by the time I arrived at 1:20pm. Two of the older boys were using a knife to cut the heads off while another boy held the chicken down by its feet and wings. Once the head was lobbed off, it was chucked into a 5-gallon bucket while the other boy ran over to the grass to hold the chicken down while its wings tried to flap and feet tried to run. Blood would squirt out until all the muscles relaxed at which point the boys would toss the chicken into a bucket where it awaited submersion into hot water. Wade’s dad (who is visiting for a few weeks from Alabama) was in charge of keeping 3 pots of water between 160-180 degrees by adding either fire or cold water depending if the temperature was too high or too low. Between that magic temperature range, the feathers would very easily to fall out. The chickens would then make their way into the slaughterhouse where they would be thrown into a type of “de-featherer.” One at a time, the chickens would be thrown into this whirlwind machine where most of the feathers would be knocked off the chicken. They were then taken to a table where a group of ladies from town would pluck out the remaining feathers, cut off the feet and gut out the gizzards. They were then bagged and put into the freezer. How lucky was I to witness all of that?!

After taking some pictures of the cows across the farm, I discovered that the orphanage sold 11 of them and will be buying some new milk cows. They need these new cows because the ones they have now are no good for milking, thus becoming a waste of time and money for the orphanage.

I also made a stop by the pig’s home near the cows. I was fortunate because I came around feeding time so they were all eager to be my friend and come close to me to take pictures. Lauren loves little piggies, so I was able to take a lot of picturesof the younger ones for her to see later. They are cute when they are small, but as soon as they get bigger they become very ugly. The big ones were standing up on their hind legs, using their gates to hold themselves up while they foamed at the mouth and squealed for food—it was a sad sight indeed…almost like something you would see at the McDonalds around the corner.

When I returned to the slaughterhouse, I saw that Wade had asked one of the boys to count all of the heads that were chucked into the bucket in order to get a better “head count” on the number of chickens that had been killed that day. The boy put the heads in piles of 50 on the ground…it sure made a great picture! One of the chickens was “no good” according to their standards so they threw it to the massive amounts of buzzards that were waiting on standby in case the tables of blood and guts was left abandoned. They certainly ripped it to shreds in very little time. I don’t think they liked that I was so close to them, but they still weren’t too shy when it came to eating.

After church we went to “la tienda” with most all the volunteers for lunch and had a nice little chat about all the things that have been happening around here with the volunteers. The staff has “re-introduced” the rules into the mix. We were not given any set ground rules when we arrived here, but they decided that we were doing things “wrong” (even though we didn’t

know we were doing them wrong). We would all hang out at the girl’s volunteer house since they have such a large living room, but apparently that is a no-no. No males are allowed there at any time even if they are accompanied by their wife. There are currently 4 married couples here serving as volunteers at Emmanuel. It makes things difficult since we all enjoy hanging out together. No one is very happy about the new/old rules that have been re-established. We would also have a bible study on Monday nights in the volunteer house where a staff member was present and led it, but that too is now not allowed; something else people were not happy about. Everyone spent lunch venting over it. When we got home Lauren thought that it would be a good idea to bake all of the volunteers cookies to make them feel a little better. I thought she had a good idea, so we baked them and then spent about 20 minutes walking around the orphanage to hand them out in little snack sized Ziploc bags. We purchased some chocolate chocolate chip cookies in town the other day and they proved quite useful today. We were saving them for a special occasion, and one presented itself to us.

We’re very much alive and eager to come home. Keep us in your prayers as we work through the last half of our trip. We’re looking forward to visitors from our church in less than two weeks! Abe, Rowe, and Cristin will be arriving two weeks from this past Friday and will be staying for four days. In the mean time we’ll continue our work in the school, on the orphanage blog and with the horses.

Finally....An UPDATE!

Written Saturday Feb. 28th

Life here at Emmanuel has been very busy for us and we have been unable to update you as to how our lives have transpired over the course of the past week and a half. The last of the Tennessee team left this morning, but had no farewell breakfast to say goodbye. They simply drove off into the sunrise and waved their goodbyes. While the team was here, we were lucky enough to have electricians swap out our leaky washing machine for one that didn’t leak all over our floor…well not after their second trip back anyway. It leaked at first installation and made a lake out of our laundry room and a river/puddle out of our kitchen. They came back the next day and replaced a washer (not a washing machine, but a piece of plastic used as something to create a seal) which seems to have solved our problem. They also found a dryer and brought it to us! How fortunate can we be? As it turns out—not very fortunate at all. We put a load in the dryer as we got into bed last night and it got all the way through the cycle, however the clothes weren’t dry and when we tried to restart the dryer in the morning, it sounded like a car that wouldn’t start. Then came the burning smell…we just unplugged it and cut our losses. We’d rather have semi-wet clothes to hang up than dry clothes that are burned to a crisp from a house fire that started with a faulty dryer. We were living a dream for at least a moment—a dream of owning our very own dryer to dry all of our clothes. We’ll just go back to hanging our clothes on the back of furniture for the duration of our trip. At least we have a washing machine!

A few days ago during dinner with the team, I decided to engage in a friendly game of beanbag toss into a hole carved out of a sheet of plywood. Normally this game is a bit challenging when tossing from a moderate distance, but I threw in a few extra challenges. I was wearing my laptop bag (15 lbs.), my gigantor knife, and was holding an 18 month old baby. I still did pretty well, but I think the baby was holding me back from reaching my true potential. Is that what having a real baby is like? One can only wonder…

Our lovely horses have now been without feed since Tuesday afternoon and they become angrier every day. I have been hounding the person in charge of getting them food since over a week before the food was gone because I’ve been taught that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” We have still been giving them hay twice a day to at least give them something to eat, but that doesn’t seem to satisfy their hunger. When we walked out to give them their hay yesterday we saw Pharaoh gallop from the back of the pasture to the front of the pasture just to get food. We have never seen him run to get food before—that’s how we know they must be really hungry. We needed to groom that day so we tried to bring in two at a time, but Pharaoh decided to push his way through and run out of the pasture to find greener grass (and yes, the grass was greener on the other side). That horse sure knows how to run when he needs to find his own food. We continue to find a tick here and there on he horses. We found another one on Grumpy’s forehead that was as big or bigger than the last one we found. Lauren had me pull this one off as well and it seemed to put up more of a fight than the last one.

School has been going well as we worked through week two with the kids. Lauren is still working with the special needs class and has been doing a fantastic job. This week she had the help of a Pennsylvanian high school student who translated between her and the teacher as well as a lady who gave her input on activities that the teacher can do in the classroom. Lauren has really been enjoying her time working with the students in the class although they can be very trying with her patience most of the time. Most of the students have behavioral problems more so than learning disabilities. I have been semi-working with the English teacher over the past week. It has been decided that I will be the teacher in the math lab starting on Monday. I will have two classes a day for about 45 minutes each and will then continue to assist the English teacher with his classes for the rest of the day. This week I was asked to do various jobs around the school such as moving bookshelves into classrooms, organizing boxes of jumbled math lab stuff, and to observe the English teacher to see what he is doing well and what areas he needs improvement. Friday I did some cement work at the school and also hung a bulletin board outside of the office of the primary school’s principal. Today (Saturday) I will be doing more concrete work at the school and possibly putting some memory cards into the computers in the computer lab. My job description is very broad in the school.

There have been cases of rabies throughout Guaimaca so when dogs are seen on the orphanage property they are to be shot. Our Danish friend Yentz very much enjoys using the semi-automatic riffle that he was given to use in killing the pigs and cows for butchering. The dogs often come to the back of the orphanage property (where the horse stables are) to feast on the flesh of cows that are thrown behind the meat house (pictured to the right of Yentz). Yentz simply walks out the back door, levels his riffle and shoots. He is a pretty good shot and has thus far killed four dogs. For some reason, Yentz thought that it would be a good idea to throw two of the dogs into the trashcan right next to the horse barn. After a day they smelled like death and the horses would get spooked when we would try to walk them past the trash can into the stables. We had no idea that the dead dogs were even in the trash can until after a few days of the smell worsening. I finally walked over to the trashcan and saw what looked to be maggots crawling all over a dead dog—disgusting!

Written Thursday March 5th

Life doesn’t really slow down here at Emmanuel. Just when you think you’re going to have the chance to post a blog, things come up and time slips right through your fingers. Saturday, ,after we worked in the school the first ½ of the day, we went to the store to get food, we worked on Emmanuel’s new blog (more on that in a minute), and before we knew it, there was no more internet until Monday. The rest of the week Lauren and I have been working in the school and I have also been working on the Emmanuel blog every chance I get. I started teaching the math lab on Monday and I would say that so far it is going very well. I have every grade one day a week and with more than one of each grade in the elementary school, it works out so that I have every class once each week. I have two classes for 45 minutes each and then the English class starts.

Lauren had a great idea for Emmanuel to start a blog in order to update everyone that wants to know how things are going here. She mentioned it to Katja (the volunteer coordinator) when they were talking about how to easily keep everyone around the world up to date on what goes on here. Katja loved the idea and asked Lauren and I to get to work on it right away. Of course we have both been giving it our all and it has bee

n coming along quite nicely. We’re hoping to have it at a point that others can check it out by the end of the week. I’ll post a link so that you can all check it out and see where I have been spending my extra time and why I haven’t posted an update more recently.

The past week has been very Eventful—two things could have potentially died. One of the horses and me! I have had almost all of the symptoms of malaria on two separate occasions over the past few weeks. I’ve had a fever, cold sweats, nausea, diarrhea, headaches, body aches, and tiredness. Lauren was very concerned for me and wanted me to get checked out in the town clinic. I had my blood tested while being watched by the doctor’s daughter and my friends in the entryway/patient room. After waiting 2 ½ hours, I found out that I do not have malaria….we still don’t know what I have, but I hope its not life threatening. Lauren still chooses to call me Malara-Lee though. When we got back from the clinic, Lauren found a tick on her neck…eww, I know! I guess if I can have a tick on my stomach, she can have one on her neck—we’re even.

A few days later while walking out to feed the horses, we saw Pharaoh sitting on the ground (which is strange for a horse anyway because they are very vulnerable in that position). After taking out one of the other horses, he finally got up, but only to return back to the sitting position. He then started to try and roll over which is very dangerous for a horse to do because it can twist its intestines and cause it to die. It appeared that he had colic. We put a halter and lead line on him and started walking him to try and help it pass. We walked him for 3 ½ hours and tried to get him to drink water since he was dehydrated. We ended up using a syringe to squirt water into his throat on multiple occasions to re-hydrate him.

When Wade (the staff member that works the farm) finally came over, he really had no advice on what to do with him. We finally let him lay down—so long as he didn’t roll over—since his legs were almost buckling under him from exhaustion. We tied him up behind our house so that we could check on him throughout the night. By morning he was back to having his old attitude, so we knew he was going to be just fine.

We’ve had a new Danish couple move in next door—Daniel and Annette. They seem to be a pretty nice young couple. It’s interesting to see some of the frustrations they have that we also had when we first got here. They’re not big fans of the lizards and other insects…but who is? We also lost two of our male volunteers—Jack from Cali and Corey from Greenvile, SC (where my mom’s side of the family is from)—and by lost them, I mean they left the orphanage, not this game called life.

Update: Here is a close-up picture of the annoying bird that wakes us up around 5am every day. If you ever see one, you have permission to shoot it on sight—especially if it is anywhere near where Lauren and I are living.

Update #2: We have received our wedding pictures and thought we would share a few of them on here with all of you people. I’m sure they are copyrighted, so unless you want to see us in court, keep them for non-commercial use. Thank you and good day.