Update

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It´s Monday. I just finished my shift. It was a good day. At first I helped the nurse with measuring and weihing the children, then Justin (our new volunteer from Washtington DC) and I took over the 3-year-olds again. No teacher so far. I almost suspected it. It must be hard finding someone to work for you if you can´t tell them when they´ll get paid next. Now they´re saying next week the new teacher should be here. But actually things went pretty well. There was only one boy crying at first, since he was new and it was his first day. After a while he shily started to play with some legos. He was so cute! When I left after lunch he started crying again. Poor thing. The kids are starting to get used to the bit of routine that we´ve been trying to establish. Like washing and drying their hands after going to the bathroom, telling us when they need to go instead of peeing on the floor or into their pants and holding hands when we walk over to the dining hall so we don´t lose anybody along the way. There was no running water again for the first few hours. I don´t know what the problem is but it has been like that about every other day last week. That´s when we get water in buckets from the Castillo (where the volunteers and a handful of the staff live) for washing hands, cooking and washing the dishes.

Last Friday I accompanied the driver on the bus in the afternoon. It was raining cats and dogs and there were many leaks in the ceiling. I had to replace the children, especially the ones sleeping. The last sleeping little girl that i picked up was completely soked, however, so I must have missed her and I was a bit embarrassed to give her back to her mum in that condition. She didn´t seem to care much though. Uff ;-)

On Saturday we went with the nurse and one of the teachers to the local hospital to buy the most important medication for the children with the first money that has been raised by the Dutch couple. The kids need to be treated for all kinds of things after the summer holidays, so this was on the very top of our priority list.

The rest of the weekend we worked on our fundraising project and went to a river to swim a bit with Mario, Severina and their kids, who live with us at the Castillo. It was like a big familiy excursion and so much fun. There´s nothing better than swimming in a cool river here where it´s always so hot and humid that you constantly feel like needing a shower.

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