My New Friends

Hello Everyone

Say hello to some of my new friends- Coni is on the right and Carolina below her and i am forgetting the girls name in front of me but will get that later this week!

Well I have been here for a total of 13 days and to date I have spent about $35.00 which is actually a bit high…I could have probably gotten away with spending about 20 if I didn’t have such a sweet tooth. It is crazy to think that I am living at little to no cost!

Last Sunday I went to the Cathedral in Comayagua…absolutely beautiful…a real pretty light yellow color with carved embellishing on the outside and then on the inside it was nice and airy and they had beautiful silver lanterns hanging from the ceiling all the way down the aisle.

As I was sitting in my pew I saw this beautiful old lady coming back from the communion line and she looked so put together and looked like she belonged back in the old days of spain...with a black veil that covered her silver hair and a cream wrap covering her shoulders and nice floral dress underneath. But as she turned the corner I realized that she was not wearing any shoes and then looking even closer the cream wrap that she had on was actually an old towel. And yet she looked so beautiful to me. She looked so well put together and used what was available to her. Totally unbelievable!

This week I signed up to hold a Library class for the kids a few times a week and will also be helping out with PE. Which should be fun…I am sure we will be playing a ton of futbol! I find that the days where I feel 100% and full of life are the days I hang out with the kids. Because our housing is a bit separated it is easy to fall into the funk of not seeing them everyday and the language barrier can be kind of intimidating at times. So I guess my biggest struggle right now is to force myself to make time everyday to go and hang out with the kids. And you can tell it brightens up their day as well. I have been teaching the girls some dance moves…thinking of maybe doing a dance class! They love the chicken dance...i will have to get a video!

Right now there big thing is they have this really long piece of heavy duty black plastic / something I am sure they found out of the trash pile/ and they loop it around a tree limb and make a swing out of it! It looks like so much fun and i would love to join in but i have to remind myself that if I were to hop on the swing that I would definitely break the plastic if not the tree limb and the plastic…and that would ruin all of their fun!!!! But it looks so fun and free…maybe I will have to make my own swing!

Daniel, one of the kids who lives in the Margarita Cook which is a cluster of about 13 houses where single mothers and their children live, tried to get me to climb up to the top of the tree where the swing was tied around one of the branches…he kept saying ¨venga, venga!¨Come on come on...climb the tree with me. And just like a monkey he was about 30 feet in the air in no time. I said “no puedo, no puedo” I can’t…but you know what…I think I might climb that tree later this week. If I can’t get on the swing I can at least climb the tree. My big “to do” list! Haha!

Other than that not too much is going on…the weather continues to be absolutely beautiful…blue skies and nice sunny days! But I hear we only have a few more weeks of this until it is brutally hot…not really looking forward to that. But I have found a nice place on the top of the hill where the girl’s school is that gets a nice breeze so I am sure that is where I will be heading most days in the next few weeks.

In Mid February we are due to get 3 volunteer groups at once and then they will keep coming from then through the end of march...so I am enjoying a bit of down time before we get really busy!

I will send a separate email with pictures from ophoto!

Hope you are having a nice weekend!!! I am thinking of all of you!!

Adios Amigos!

Joan