On Sunday, we found a Catholic Church within a 30 minute walk from our flat and arrived for the 8:30 English Mass. Everyone, including the priest, was very friendly and thanked us for coming. On the way back home, we stopped at a restaurant where we ordered a decadent chocolate pastry and two mango/guava smoothies. (The total bill was $3. We mention the prices because we continue to be astonished at how inexpensive it is here.) They did look at us somewhat strangely for ordering this for breakfast. After observing what others were eating, we were sorry to not have ordered something more traditional; it all looked delicious. We took it easy during the afternoon, resting, reading and preparing for our lessons for tomorrow. We are going to split our class into two parts; Harold will take the more advanced and Carol will take the others. Carol hopes to divide her group into three and have three stations for activities. To succeed, she must have the help of the two women who work in this classroom. We’ll see how it goes!
Today is Monday and five of us volunteers and a yoga instructor started the day doing yoga, outside on the grass at 6:30 AM. We will be doing this every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. It was really a neat experience - very calming. The division of the groups at school was partially successful. I bought little red, green and blue bracelets to identify the groups (10 of each color). The idea was to collect them at the end of the day and re-issue them tomorrow. Well, we now have at most eight bracelets collected. We assume that because these children were beggars, whatever they get into their hands, they want to keep. We spent much of the day trying to keep the milling masses from running off with puzzle pieces, crayons and pieces to a game we brought. Last week, we lost two jump ropes. Keeping track of our equipment is a full time job. When we inspected book bags, we found some of the loot. The children are all very sweet and taking the items isn’t malicious; it is just the way their lives have been. The language barrier is also a problem. Talking to young children is difficult enough, but, having them not understanding the language makes it all more difficult. Oh, well. We’ll just keep on doing our best and trying to make some headway.
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| St. Thomas Catholic Church |
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| The little ones work on a puzzle together. |
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| Carol reads a story to some of the older students. |
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