Monday

2/6/17

 

Yesterday was fun and games but today it was time to get down to work. We headed to Palo Blanco school to help wherever we could. A large portion of the group helped work on the construction project. They are still working on building additional classrooms as the current rooms are overflowing. The whole building is constructed with concrete walls. There are open louvered windows in each classroom that allow the sounds of exuberant children to seep out in the hallway and bounce off the concrete walls. The level of noise in the building is not very conducive to learning and when the classrooms are pushing capacity it makes things even more difficult. These new classrooms will allow the students and teachers to spread out.

Rachel and Joan helped Christina, the missionary, in the nursing clinic with vaccinations. A few hours were spent updating records and determining which kiddos needed some vaccinations. One of the 8^th grade students helped us get the kids from the classrooms and at times you could hear them crying as they were ushered toward the enfermaria (nurses clinic). They were all brave and the tears stopped as soon as they were offered dulce (candy) as a reward afterwards.

We spent a few hours before dinner playing with the kiddos at the Ark orphanage. As is typical there were many varied activities going on. The older kids helped supervise the younger ones. Children could be seen playing games of soccer, riding scooters, coloring, playing tag and playing on the playground. Chris Null was egged on by a 13 year old boy names Darwin and could be seen chasing him all over the campus. Amazingly Chris had some serious speed and caught him! It did take him quite some time to catch his breath afterwards!

 

 

 

We walked into town so we could connect to the wifi at Pizza Pepperoni to post this blog and connect with loved ones. Have a great night everyone!