WE SURVIVED OUR FIRST WEEK AT THE ORPHANAGE!!!!

WE SURVIVED OUR FIRST WEEK AT THE ORPHANAGE!!!!

So we moved from the guesthouse in La Ceiba to El Cacao, which is about a 30-minute drive. We live with 3 other people at the moment and there will be more coming in next month. We live in the Volunteer house, which is owned by a couple that works with the HHK organization. The house isn’t as bad as I thought it would be: there is a big room in the front, which is the living room, dining room, and kitchen. There are three rooms and three bathrooms, but we only use two at the moment. Nathan, Ennie, and I share the one bedroom where there are a total of four cots. Then in the other room is Alison; she is from Canada, and Danni, who is from England. All of our roommates are really fun to hang out with! We all do weird things after dark because it gets dark here at six, and we can’t leave because it is too unsafe. So we do random things to keep us entertained: dancing, singing the Grease soundtrack and with the classic Disney songs, coloring with crayons, measuring ourselves on the wall, making a collage of our countries flags, just fun and random things like that.

Lets get to the reason we are here. So last week was our first week at the orphanage, and I would have to say it went really well. I didn’t know what to expect and from what I was hearing from the volunteer before us we were in for a rude awakening. She told us all the horror stories about the Hogar and the Kinder that truly freaked me out. I was having second thoughts the entire weekend. Then on Monday we went to the Hogar to start our new “job” and it took us a couple of days to get in the hang of things. We were able to control the kids pretty well surprisingly. The kids are truly amazing, they don’t think very highly of themselves, which is very sad. This past week I have found out some stuff about why they are at the orphanage and what they have been through and it made me really sad. They are so tiny and all they need is someone to love and care about them and that is what we are doing here. We are showing them that people really do care about them. They need as much of that as they can get. For instance, whenever they draw or write they always say “ muy feo” which means “very ugly” we tell them every time that it is not it is ”muy bonita” which means “very beautiful”. We try and boost their confidence as much as we can, so that they will know that they truly are special.

We have four students that we teach and they are all so cute, there is Santos who is the oldest, he is about 5 or 6, we are getting him ready to go to first grade in January so we are trying really hard to teach him as much as we can. Then there is Carolina she is the only girl and is about 5 she is very smart and really sweet. She usually is quiet but we have gotten her to be a bit louder. Like when we are doing the numbers, we say we can’t hear them so they scream it. Next is Maynor, he is four and the cutest thing, he is really small and really hyper. He does well until the fourth member of our group decides to come to class. Joel is only three, so he is too young to actually be in school, but there is no one else to look after him or teach him anything, so he comes to our class. There is sometimes that he behaves and is quiet but then he will freak out and run around and slam the door and then he will get all the kids hyper and rowdy. We have to do anything we can to get them to focus again, but you can’t really get too upset with them because they are so cute and they have been through a lot. But we do control them and teach them. What we do is teach them the Alphabet in English and Spanish, how to recognize them and how to write them. We also teach them the Numbers in both languages, shapes and colors as well. So its pretty fun, I really love it! I know that there will be days that I hate it but its for the kids and they need all the loving and caring that they can get, so its totally worth it.

Well, that enough info we have time for. We have to hitch back to La Cacoa, its going to get dark soon.