The Boys of Summer Are Almost Gone

The past week has flown by for Lauren and I—although today (Saturday) has seemed to go by at a record slow pace. I took ill last night at the very end of our day and spent the rest of the evening and into this morning feeling gross. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure it will pass, but its’ just a horrible way to spend your Saturday in another country. I’m still not sure what it was that did me in since Lauren and I both had the same diet throughout the day. I suppose women simply possess an anti-sick gene that men do not.

We have still been getting up every day at 6am to feed the horses, clean up, feed ourselves and then walk to the school. This entire week we have been walking past the “small boys” playing in the park area by the school. The children rotate between various areas at the orphanage throughout the week so that everyone has an equal share of time at each location. This particular group of boys still calls me “El Transportador” because they are referring to the actor (Jason something-or-other) that acted in the “Transporter” movies over the past few years—they think I look like him. I happen to think it’s kinda funny.

One of the boys—Armando Samuel—has taken a particular interest to my wife and I since we have gotten here. He is probably about 8 and comes across as one of those “tough” kids, but is really a softie. I was taking a picture with Pedro (the boy on the right), but Armando ran over and literally jumped into the picture and it turned out perfectly so I couldn’t delete it. He was off his feet when the picture actually taken which is why I think is so cool. A few minutes later, three of the boys decided to try and push me over, but as it turned out I was able to hang Armando by his feet while the other boys tickled him.

When we finally make our way over to the school after hanging out with the kids for a little bit, we sit around and wait for someone to show up. We’re told to be there at 8, but there usually isn’t anyone there until about 8:20-8:30. One day we decided to just lay down under the Honduran and Danish flag while we waited. I think Lauren took a pretty good picture, so I thought I would share it with you. When someone does show up we have been spending the better part of the day in meetings (my favorite way to spend my time) discussing how to be an effective teacher in the classroom (i.e. discipline, decorating, etc). It’s funny because Lauren and I are sitting there with a group of teachers listening to Robert talk, but it’s completely in Spanish so we are using our handy-dandy Spanish-English dictionary to look up words we don’t know. We are probably catching about ¼ of what is being said, but I think its one of the better ways to really learn Spanish. Lauren spends almost all of her time at the school around people that don’t speak English. At least when I’m there after the meetings, I’m working with Felipe who is going to be teaching English with me so you know that he speaks English. Lauren has been working with the special ed teacher who doesn’t speak a lick of English and who might be a new teacher that has never taught special ed. I think Lauren has been encountering more obstacles than I have during this trip, but hopefully her Spanish improves as a result. She has definitely improved on her artistic abilities! She drew all of the signs and painted most of them for the entire elementary school and high school! She finished and the wood shop varnished them for us. Don't they look wonderful?

One of the staff members (Kim) went to Tegucigalpa to do some grocery shopping so she asked us if there was anything that we wanted/needed while she was there. We instantly came up with cheese, milk, and chicken. She bought us a 2 lb. block of cheddar, a gallon of 3% milk and a 14 pack of boneless/skinless chicken breasts and all to the tune of 433 limps ($22.92). We can’t buy cheddar cheese anywhere in the local town. Instead all we can buy is cheese made in town and it is white, crumbly and very salty. Milk is also harder to come by and more expensive. Meats in town are “at your own risk” so we choose not to risk. We made chicken fajitas that very same afternoon for lunch…tortillas, chicken, bell peppers, and onions! They were soooo delicious—one of my favorite meals of the trip thus far. That night for dinner we put some cheddar cheese in our bean burritos and they too were mighty tasty!

The power was down here for about 10 hours last week which means that we needed to open our refrigerator and freezer as little as possible so our food would hopefully not go bad. When the power finally came back on at 4pm we noticed that the refrigerator was not getting very cold after a few hours. I turned up the temp in hopes to get our food cold. The next day I noticed that the water in our make-shift pitcher was semi frozen, so I turned town the temperature. A few days later Lauren and I wanted to use some eggs to make an egg burrito for breakfast so we pulled out three eggs, but after cracking them open, they were a little more stiff than usual. As you can see in the picture, it took a little work to turn these frozen eggs into the scrambled form they needed to be in.

Lauren, being the sweet and lovely girl that she is, brought some candles (compliments of Gail) to make our home more homey. American Airlines, being the airline that it is, broke one of our big, glass Gold Canyon candles rendering it useless…until recently. We have had our eye out for something to put the candle in to make it usable, and this week we realized that we could use our Hunts pasta sauce can to place the candle in. The candle was about 1-inch larger in diameter than the can, but since wax is so pliable, we were able to push it down into the can causing the excess wax to sever off like skin under a doctor’s scalpel. We chose to use the candle to light our spaghetti dinner that very same night.

The orphanage receives new children fairly regularly and one of the most recent children came down with chicken pox. To keep her from getting the rest of the children sick, they have quarantined her in the medical clinic 24-7. Naturally, someone needs to stay with her every hour of every day, including the evening. Lauren and I have stayed with her for 4 hours on a couple of occasions while some of the other volunteers have a break to do other things. Lauren isn’t sure if she has had chicken pox, so to discover the truth about the matter, she e-mailed a family member. They (and by they I mean Marianne), for one reason or another, has yet to respond and it has been five days. Lauren doesn’t appear to have chicken pox yet, but she will be staying with Roxanna (the girl with chicken pox) for a while after lunch today. We’re both hoping that she stays pox free, but if she doesn’t then I’ll take care of her here at our humble abode.

We’re still feeding the horses 7 days a week (6 with feed and hay, 1 with hay only—don’t worry Tammy, we’re following your instructions) and grooming them 3 days a week. On Tuesday we noticed that one of the horses had a cut on the top of his back that was about 3 inches long. This particular horse is bullied by all the horses in the pasture (except for the little colt). We are guessing that he was pushed into the barbed wire fence by one of the other horses creating the cut across his back. We (and by we I mean Lauren) have been putting medicine on it twice a day per instructions from Wade (the agriculture staff member here) and it appears to be getting better. During grooming days, Faith (the momma horse) has been extremely difficult when we (and by we I mean me) try to clean the poo from her rear hooves. She will pick up her feet and move around so that I can’t get to them. We consulted with Tammy via e-mail and she explained to us how to deal with the problem. Lauren stays at the front of the horse to correct her whenever she throws a fit during hoof cleaning. Thursday she was a bit of a pain, but Saturday was the day that she really had a tantrum. She went as far as to kick her foot at me and almost stomp of my foot. She eventually corrected her behavior, but it took some diligence on our part. No one wants to have their foot smashed by a horse, so it’s easy to simply quit and try another day. Unfortunately, if we allowed Faith to get away with her behavior, it would only encourage it in the future.

We have a new team from Tennessee (among other states around the country) visiting here for the next three weeks. The team has invited all of the volunteers and staff to breakfast, lunch, and dinner during their entire stay. So far we have had a dinner and breakfast and it has been fantastic! They have had 7 courses in each meal, including fresh fruit, cinnamon rolls, banana bread, chicken, etc. They have had fruit punch, lemonade and sweet tea to drink which has been a pleasant change to our usual diet. Dr. Don is heading up the team and it is composed of people of various professions from different areas. Don is a dentist and is also the man responsible for packing and sending the packages that people in the States send to volunteers such as Lauren and I. Lauren and I talked to him this morning and he informed us that the next shipment wouldn’t leave Tennessee until March 13th and wouldn’t arrive at the orphanage until the beginning of April. We know that some of you (and by some of you I mean my mom and aunt) have already sent us packages and we anxiously await their arrival. But for those of you that have expressed an interest in sending us a package and have yet to send it, thank you for the thought, but by the time it gets here we will be about ready to come home. We were pretty bummed about the news on the care packages, but that’s the way the ball bounces. If you’re thinking, “Well I can send a package directly to the orphanage instead of to Tennessee first!” I regret to inform you that it is VERY expensive and takes about 2 months to get to here. Thank you all for your support though!

When Lauren and I were here with Sandals Church in August, we were leaving church on our last Sunday here and after seeing a white arch Lauren jokingly told Sandy (our team leader), “I could get married here!” Sandy took it from there and got the discussion started amongst the team about Lauren and I getting married while we were at the orphanage. We had a daily team meeting at night and that was the topic of discussion for at least half an hour. Lauren and I decided that if it was God’s will for us to get married then we would move forward. We saw the arch on our way out of church today so we had Felipe take a picture of us to show all of you what we were almost married under last August. We know at least a small group of you are glad that we got married in a country where you were able to attend. We should have pictures of the wedding sometime around the end of February and we’ll be sure to post some of them on our blog so that you can see them as well.