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 . . .