Trabajo voluntario . . .

Hola Friends and Family!

We`ve been so busy with activities and volunteering that none of the kids have had a chance to sit down and write about what we`ve been up to the last few days. On Thursday the kids had Spanish class in the morning, but in the afternoon we did something a little bit different than the norm. Instead of going off on a fun and exciting adventure like riding horses in the rain or seeing scarlet macaws and toucans, we went to the local orphanage armed with coloring books, crayons, and playing cards to begin our volunteer work. The moment I opened my blue Northface backpack to start passing out the goodies (all collected and donated by Catherine Goodman, Teach for America Program Director extrodinaire) the kids swarmed around me, begging for attention and care. It was overwhelming and pretty depressing.

The orphanage has two main rooms constructed of gray cement. The first room had two double beds one of which held three crying babies who were clearly longing to be held, the other room was full of bunk beds where many of the children were sleeping - I got the impression that the kids slept in shifts, in order to guarantee enough bedspace for everyone. The orphanage was home to approximately 28 children. About half of those kids had families that would come pick them up at the end of the day, but the rest were there full time, either because their parents could no longer afford to care for them or because they quite simply no longer had parents. After a little while, the children settled down and Melissa, Alexia, Allen, and James all played with them. We all left at the end of the day feeling overwhelmed with the experience. What could we possibly do to really make a difference for these children? It was a question we were all asking ourselves as we drove away.

That evening, we had a cooking class at the Guacamaya School. All of us learned to make tortillas under the watchful eyes of our teachers Julia and Karla. Everyone did an excellent job and when we were done frying the tortillas we all feasted on balleadas. A balleada is a typical food consumed in Honduras and is consists of a tortilla filled with beans, crema (which is sort of like sour cream), cheese, chizmol (cut up onion & tomato), and egg, Que rico!

Friday we returned to the orphanage, only this time we came armed with fruit instead of coloring books. The kids inhaled what we had brought and then we all got down to the business of playing once again. Sanja and I read the Spanish version of The Giving Tree, which was a big hit. After the orphanage, we sent everyone home to get themselves freshened up, because Friday night we were all heading out to the discoteca.

That's right, Melissa, Allen, Alexia, James, Sanja, myself, and some of the teachers all went out to las piscinas to check out what a Honduran discotech would be like. They played a lot of reggaeton music and some other genres that we weren't too familiar with, but we had fun anyway. When an American song finally did come on, the kids danced up a storm. It was really fun. After about an hour and a half of dancing, we called it a night and went home. We needed to rest before our big day at El Jaral, the waterpark, on Saturday.

More to come later . . .

Miercoles

On Wedensday we had a blast. We woke up as we do everyday and went to class. After we attended class we ate lunch with our host families. And we chilled before we continued our day. Finally we reached the fun part of the day horse back riding. We we`re so scared. Well aleast i know I was (Alexia). The horses were stinking and big. It felt like you would just fall off. Melissa even looked a little scared. When we took off on the horses they started to use the bathroom ever where. That was funny to Alan and I. Then we started on the long journey. I really didn`t like it at first. My butt was hurting and so was everyone elses. But it was pretty cool when our tour guide came. He it more fun. I really think he made it funner for James. James kepted wanting his horse to go fast and he got it. Our guide kept making his wish come true. But my horse didn`t get alone with Melissa horse. Her horse kept trying to kick my horse. And they both scared us. After a while of riding we saw the beauitful sites. I really think that was the area where the poor lived. We saw babies running in the underwear. We saw woman walking up the mountains carrying their babies on their backs. But hten we came to a small village. And thats when a million children ran towards us. They circled around James and begged him to buy something from them. Ms. McKinny Wood had to save him. So we all wanted to help so we brought something from them. We brought their dolls and Alan even donated money. But they kept asking us to buy something from them. We would say no thank you, but it seems the more we said it the more children came. It was really scary for all of us. Then we took pictures of the village and their schools. Their school is so different. It remineded us of the old sc days back in slavery time. Tehn we sat at a cafe were we drank sodas. Ms. McKinny Wood, Meliisa, and Ms. Bossman talk to the children. It was so sweet. But the fun was coming to an end. It started raining hard on us. And our tour guide said it was time to go. We all pleaded to stay, but we had to go. When we went to get on the horse Alan horse pass gas and so did he. That made all of us laugh. Then we were off back home in the pouring rain. I felt like crying, because I though I was gone get sick. But after a while we made it into a joke. We just started joking around which made time pass by so fast. Before I knew it we were back at the school. We had to take pictures to remember this moment. Then we went home and change clothes. I was so happy, but my happiness ended when we came back to the school and the lights went out. But that still didn`t stop our party. We ate and danced until we had to go home and prepare to go to sleep for the next day of a wild and cool adventure.

A Journey in the Mayan Ruins

As usual we started class at 9:00 in the morning, but that does not describe the time we awoke. For breakfast we had fruits and juice and the fruits was very good it´s better than the fruit in the USA. After that we had our two hour class and i learned alot of more things about spanish. After class we went to eat with our host family and we ate some noodles with chicken and some vegetables. After that we went to our room and had a lil nap because in Honduras it is so hotttt! About 1:30 we all came to the school to began our journey to the mayan ruins. I was very tired and the sun was beaming as usual. we rode in a motor taxi because the trip there would have taken a long time if we would have walked. When we arrived we had our own personal tour guide name Mauricio, he was an excellent tour guide because he explained everything to us in English....! Not only was he a good tour guide but he also swore in Germany....lol....! The Mayan Ruins was very beautiful to me and I really liked it, the history was very amazing too. There were some ruins where we could climb and we took pictures climbing the ruins and havin fun.When the tour was over i was so hungry that i thought about hamburgers the rest of the way so one of our sponsers Sanja took us on a very good walk. We went to this excellent restarunt and the food so good.

Later that night we were to watch a movie at the school, but it was raining very hard so we were to walk to the boys house to watch a movie at 7:30, before we left the lights went off everywhere in the town and we had to light our candle in our room for light. The rain was coming down hard and me and alexia had to walk up to the store to eat dinner for the night, we was so tickled by how hard it rained because we had to get really wet and our host mom was with us also. When we went to watch the movie we met my teacher (karla) son who is very cute and active. He hit us with pillows all night but we had fun playing with him. Afterwards it was time for us to go home because we had to do our homework. The boys walked us home and they got wet too becuase the rain was pouring down really hard.


well let me just say that everyday is a challenging day for me because i have never experienced much and i really enjoy the things we do even when im scared and screaming!


¡Adios!
Melissa Ruffins

El Jardin de Mariposas

Hola! Today was our second full day here in Copan, Honduras. This morning, the kids started their classes at La Escuela Guacamaya. They are taking classes for two hours each day, studying Spanish with their own personal teacher. Melissa has my teacher from last summer, Karla (yay!). The kids seemed pretty nervous before school and they had alot of questions about the way classes would run. Thankfully, when Therese and I returned to the school at 11 to meet them, they were all smiling and laughing. They really seemed to enjoy their first class AND they had learned some new phrases to communicate with their host family- which is AWESOME.

After class, the kids went back to their host families and Therese and I went back to our hotel to eat. We had mac and cheese:) It's a little tough for our host mom to feed us vegetarianas. After lunch, we indulged in one of my favorite traditions from Copan- the afternoon siesta (who says naps are just for kindergartners!). At 2:00, we all met at the school for a trip to the Jardin de Mariposas, where we saw some truly beautiful butterflies. There are thousands of butterfly species here in Honduras. I felt like a little kid walking around the garden and trying to match up the butterflies with the pictures they had given us and it was GREAT:)

When we grew tired of walking around the garden, we all walked up to a little store/cafe outside. We talked about some of the differences and similarities we found between Leland and Copan. In some ways, the towns are very similar...The kids really noticed how people sort of mill around outside houses and just sit and talk. That's one of of my favorite things about Leland...and also about Copan. Life is just a little bit slower...and, after a loooooong school year, a slower lifestyle seems just about perfect.

More later...

Adios!
Sanja:)

We made it!

Friends and family,

We finallt made it to Honduras! The final passport was received midday on Friday (yes, the day before we flew out) and we then headed up to Memphis where we stayed the night so we could catch our incredibly early flight to Miami (we had to be at the airport at 4:30AM - yikes!) Everything went smoothly and we arrived in Miami with no problems, but about an hour before our flight was scheduled to leave for San Pedro Sula, the setbacks began.

We were hanging out, waiting for our flight, when James and Allen announced that they had just read that the flight to San Pedro Sula had been cancelled - not delayed - cancelled. Of course I headed up to the ticket counter, only to be told that the next flight to SAP was full and that we would have to stay the night in Miami . . . not news I waned to hear. I kept talking to the agent and eventually he was able to ook us on a flight to Honduras later in the afternoon, the only problem was that five of the remaining six seats on the plane were in FIRST CLASS. That´s right, Sanja and all of the students got to fly in first class while I was stuck back in coach and let me tell you, first class is a prett swanky place to be, at least it looked that way from where I was sitting . . .

We arrived in San Pedro Sula around 5pm only to discover that our luggage had been left in Miami - not news we wanted to hear, but so far we´ve been dealing the best we can. We arrived in Copan after a long bumpy van ride, took the kids to their host families, and all crashed with exhaustion.

Yesterday morning, we got the kids up, they ate breakfast with their host families (Sanja and I had empanadas - they were heavenly!) and Enrique Carrillo (aka Kike), the school director, gave them a tour of La Escuela Guacamaya (The Guacamaya School) and of the town of Copan. After lunch, we went to El Parque de Pajarros (The Bird Park) and got to see some really amazing birds like Scarlet Macaws, Toucans, Owls, Parakeets, etc. At the end of the tour the students even got to hold some of them. I will try to post pictures later this evening. We spend a good portion of the evening buying clothes, as the thought of spending a third day in the outfts we wore on the plane was more than any of us could handle (plus American Airlines has to give us $25 each for each day that we go without luggage).

This morning the students met their private Spanish instructors, and each of them is currently in class improving their Spanish. They are doing an awesome job, and they have really impressed me with their ability to deal with challenging situations like flights being cancelled, luggage being delayed, eating new foods, holding enormous birds, etc. They are SO AWESOME!!!!

I´ll have one of the students post later, but for now I´m signing off.

Adios!

Therese (aka Ms. McKinny-Wood)

P.S. If you need to reach me, I now have a cell phone that can be used here in Honduras, the number is 011-504-9818-8845. Keep in mind that without a phone card, it is really expensive to call Honduras, so I recommend buying one before you call - you may be able to get one online.