Life at the Hogar...

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BUENAS DIAS!!!

sorry for the wait on the email...i wrote a mini novel to everyone on
friday but the power cut out just before I pressed send!

It seems crazy that I´ve only been here a week and a half so far!
Everything in la Villa San Antonio runs pretty much as it did 15-20 years
ago, which makes it easy to slip out of time. This place is so rich in
detail and whatever´s in front of you demands a full experience, whether
it´s spinning kids around, licking mango juice of your hands or scrubbing
clothes on the washboard.

The kids here are all so loving, creative, talented, caring, absolutely
beautiful and 10 other wonderful adjectives I haven´t yet thought of!
They love to tease and trick me and I normally have to ask 5 different
sources to get a strait answer. One of my nicknames here is ¨pellito´,
which means little ponytail. I sometimes get 30 minute sessions at the
´hairdresser´ where my hair is pulled into a painful but interesting looks and
concludes in little buns or braids.

They´ve also recently discovered the joys of dog-piling. A group of
8-9 of them will charge me with ´hugs´ until I´m rolling around in the
dirt yelling AYUDAME (help me!) while they´re slapping their knees
laughing around me. Just as quickly they´ll pull me up and start brushing
all the dirt off my legs and face and rub my back to make sure Im clean
and let me know they do, in fact, enjoy having me around...or maybe just
so they can repeat their tackle cycle without too much consequence!

I started helping in the kindergarten classes from 8-10 every morning.
The school is down the street from the Hogar and is run and funded through
the hogar. There´s 4 small classrooms and half the yard is turned into a class
with a board and desks. Playing with the toddlers is both the one of the
most rewarding and frustrating experiences. These kids are always
laughing and smiling and dishing out slobbery kisses and hugs to whoever´s
accepting them...I´ve never had so many! They´ll randomly burst into
songs about God´s love for them or ¨Viejo Julio´s farm.´ But they´re also
the most violent group of people I´ve ever been around! Slapping and
scratching are the main forms of communication between them and it
sometimes seems like a competition of who can make the most kids cry in a
day. It´s hard because it´s either attack or be attacked for a lot of
them (well...it alternates between I´ve got your back and watch your
back!) I´m still consulting my dictionary on loving ways to communication
´no hitting!´ But on the whole it´s amazing to be surrounded by so many
cuddles and hugs and love, which is my strongest impression at the end of
the day.

After kindergarten I translate emails for the social worker and help the
kids write letters to their sponsor parents. I´ve been learning a lot
about the histories of the kids and of the orphanage itself. For having
140 to look after every day, it´s increadible how smooth everything runs!
Most of the kids here aren´t actually orphans. Honduras´ average age of
pregnancy (13) and machisto culture are huge contributors to population
growth and a lot of kids can´t be supported and end up in the orphanages.
Apparently there are hundreds of orphanages set up all around Honduras. A
lot of the kids are mentally, sexually and emotionally abused before they
come here, which is hard to deal with but also amazing to see how
resillient they can be. Four kids from the same family came in last week
and within their first night they were laughing and playing and later
fighting the other kids for their spots in line. ..it doesn´t take anyone
long to feel at home here!

Saturday I started doing counselling, which I´m going to be doing every
other afternoon now. The first group was 6 of the little boys, all around
8-11 years old and all adorable. they´d been caught smoking in the
bathroom..which is tricky since their bathroom is literally 3 wooden
walls, a broken door and a hole in the ground. They´d found the cigarette
on the street and wanted to know what it was like, so we explained to them
risks and health consequences of smoking, etc. After we talked with a boy
who´s been scratching other kids on the face until they bleed. I´m
finding it hard to talk to them only about these things, because most
behaviors stem from bigger problems and mirror the abuse they saw before coming here.
But I´ve been learning a lot from this and it´s been good challenge so
far.

I eat lunch at the commedor every day, a place down the street from the
Hogar that feeds local children whose families cant support 3 meals a day.
A woman, Alba, runs it out of her yard through donations to the Hogar.
Her house is the size of my bedroom and holds a bed for her and her
daughter, a stove, a shelf for cooking material and another self for
clothes and suitcases. She showers at a friend´s house down the street
and has a small tap outside to do dishes in. I´m not sure where she goes
to the bathroom because there isn´t one, but her daughter normally strips
down and goes in the yard.
Kati and I wash the kids hands and serve the meals, and then play games
with them. The food is pretty good. A lot of milky rice and beans and
cabbage salad. The other day we had chicken parts and rice, which was a
beautiful medley of chicken necks, livers and feet. I managed to pawn off
the still-taloned, fat-wrapped foot to the delighted boy next to me, but
wasn´t so lucky in escaping an attack by livers. They left my body in
record time and I´ve made a clear leap back to being vegetarian since then.

>From 6-8 we run tutoring sessions for the highschool kids. A lot of them need help
with chemistry and math, so me and kati have been spending a bit of time
brushing up on mols and fractions to help them in broken spanish. After that most of the
girls are already in bed and we tuck them in and read stories. Before
tutoring started last week, we were tucking the little boys into bed..they
all pretend not to want a hug or kiss but if you miss them they run after
you and say you missed me!! This one little boy started pointing all over
his face going uno mas, y uno mas! meaning a kiss here! and here! and
here!

It didn´t take long to settle into the routine of things here, but I feel
like I´m finally starting to sink more into the mindset of it as
well...and learning to slowwww down. No one is in too much of a hurry for
anything around here and it´s nice to step out of expectations for what a
day will look like, or having to push constant adventure or activity to
feel happy or productive. People don´t have a lot here in comparisson to
Canada, but they fully absorb the beauty from what they do have and enjoy the
spaces in between. I´m learning a lot from the pace of life over here and
truly enjoying all the lessons along the way!

I´ve been thinking about all of you a lot, and I hope everything is going
well in whatever you´re doing!! So much love to all of you!!

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