que duerme con los angeles

---

HOLA!

Buenas dias, hope everyone is doing well!

This week has been fabuloso and filled with bedtime stories, que hora es
señor lobo (what time is it mister wolf,) gruelling hours perfecting the
alphabet, frijoles y tortillas, mangoes and sleepovers at casa uno.


Monday night I went to the cachoros (kinder-kids) room at bedtime and told
them the story of the beautiful and kind witch of the children. She lives
in your dreams and will give you whatever dreams you ask her for. We
talked a bit about what they wanted to dream about that night, which was
mostly playing soccer, playing with ponies, chickens and puppies, being a
cowboy, or being with their mothers again. They yelled out questions
about this strange and wonderful witch who they couldn´t believe was
actually on their side! The next morning at kinderclass 3 of them ran up
to me to say La Bruja de los niños (witch of the children) visited them in
their dreams and gave them exactly what they asked for.

Since then the witch has gathered a bit of a cult-like following among the
toddlers and there´s been a hot demand for her bed-time tales. Most of
them have claimed a visit from her and they love to tell each other how
beautiful she is.

As adorable as this is, I think their bedtime is the craziest I have ever
seen children. You walk in and everyone´s running around without a shirt
on and screaming at you to watch their cartwheel as their legs smack into
another wandering child´s open mouth. The twins, Peto and Quike, combined the
most powerful trouble-making forces to pull the sleeping kids out of bed
and bite them on their necks and arms. Nicole was sleeping on my leg and one of them ran
over to fart on her face to wake her up...whoever wasn´t a victim joined
them with waving their bums in the others´ faces. Then Coco, who was NOT
to be farted on, grabbed the chamber pot and ran after them with it--it´s
contents slopping dangerously close to the ridge.

Even though I sometimes walk out of there asking myself why I even went
in, i think it´s actually my favorite time to be with them. Whatever goes
wrong is usually so absurd that I can´t feel bad for long and just end up
laughing when when I try to vent about it.

Thursday night Kat (the other volunteer here) and I baked rice-crispie
squares and slept over at Casa Uno for one of the little boy´s birthdays.
Casa uno is the house rented for the middle aged boys (7-13) and fits just
over 20 boys in two bedrooms and the pull-out couch in living
room...around 3 boys for every bed. We put on Casper the Ghost and Kat
sat by the TV translating line by line for them while I cooked up the rice
crispies in their kitchen. At bedtime they pulled out a cot for us and
the boys spent 5 minutes smoothing out the wrinkles in the sheets and
straitening it out to make it just perfect. They asked for a few bedtime
stories and then we all fell asleep.

At 430 everyone got up for school. Some of the boys cooked breakfast
(warm sugary milk with chunks of squash) and the others read stories,
swept and mopped, shined their shoes or set the table. Then they squeezed
outside the 3 wood planks that make up a bucket shower and took turns
dumping water on each other. They´d run into the lawn to lather up and
wait to be rinsed again. They dont have many towels, so must of them just
pulled on their black shoes and navy pants and stood in line for Ada, casa
uno´s ¨mother¨, to hand them their ironed shirts. They just had their
heads shaved so they looked like little monks or little old men in their
uniforms. So cute!

Last night a student group of volunteers came from minnesota and are
staying for 2 weeks. There´s now 12 people staying in our tiny house,
which is a strech but lots of fun. I´m leaving on Wednesday for a week to
visit the ancient ruins at Copan for a couple days with Kati and then
maybe camping in Parque Celaque, Honduras´ highest peaked cloud forest.
Yay!

Other this..nothing springs to mind on what to write. Mostly what makes
living here amazing is the little details anyway and there´s too many to
fit in a letter right now. Hope everyone is doing really well and
enjoying what should now be beautiful weather in Canada!

Much love to all of you,
Sarah

---