First Day

---

Today we had the morning off so we went up to the park that is about 3 blocks away and went for a walk. The park is really beautiful and shaded by trees with peeling bark that is yellow, orange, red and green. It is in a fancy neighborhood and seems to be a popular place for exercise. We are planning to go for walks there whenever we don't have to start work too early, especially beacuse we are planning on doing a 4 hour hike to the volcano our last weekend so we need to get in shape! After breakfast we prepared our bags for work and then studies some Spanish because we both definitely need A LOT of practice. In the afternoon we went to an orphanage for children with HIV. The kids were all under 10 and Dr. Iglesias explained to us that most of them had lost their parents to AIDs or their parents or family were too sick or poor to take care of them. The good news is, however, that the WHO provides antiretroviral treatment to anyone with HIV in developing countries, so these kids will at least have free medicine. Our role at the orphanage is to see any of the kids who are sick, be it a cold or something more serious, but luckily today all of the kids were healthy so we just hung out and chatted with the kids and the director of the home. There were 4 girls who were in "time out" with her in her office because they had somehow managed to break a deadbolt out of their bedroom door. These girls were tiny so you can imagine how feisty they must be to have managed that! We tried out Skype with mom and Tim tonight and after finally figuring out that it was mom's computer with the problem we managed to have a successful chat. Whoever invented Skype is a genius!

---