Monday, June 1

Today has been our big planning day for all of the projects and goals that we hope to realistically accomplish during the time we're here. We spent the morning in a planning session in one of the houses at Villa Soleada. We talked about our five main areas of concentration which include: work at the orphanage, adult ESL classes for those who have interest at Villa Soleada (VS), potential crafts and marketing for the families at V.S., conducting surveys of the needs of the community in front of V.S., and tutoring/activities for the V.S. kids' camp. We have a good proposal that we are going to discuss with the rest of the staff hopefully tonight and then start implementing our goals tomorrow. After planning, we begin walking around the community in front of VS and counting the number of houses that are there for our potential surveys. As we were walking, we made some new friends and purchased refrescos (pop) from the local pulperia (corner store). One of the families wanted to show us the oso perezoso (sloth) that they had found. It was a little baby one and it had hurt one of its nails. They are keeping it until they find someone to sell it to. At lunchtime, we ate with those working at VS and enjoyed a delicious meal of rice, red beans, spaghetti, and tortillas. One of the women that cook said that is one of the most popular meals eaten by the workers. During lunch we began to make a list of the words we want to begin teaching in English. We have decided it will be most beneficial to start with vocabulary that they use at the worksite like shovel, cement, blocks, etc. Those classes begin tomorrow. Students go to school from about 7:30-noon here, so in the afternoon we got to play with some of the children. For the rest of the afternoon, we returned to the apartment and typed up all our notes from the morning to share with staff tonight.

I'm rather sleepy right now and I just woke up from resting for an hour. I think it's going to take a while to get used the schedule of each day's events and the heat here. I don't feel that it's been miserably hot, but I haven't felt too much cool air here yet. Tonight we are going to a baleada stand for dinner. Baleadas are the most common food in Honduras. They are made up of any of the following combinations of food: rice, beans, eggs, chicken, cheese, and possibly more.
Hasta manana!