Home

Through the comedor window, the multi-colored lights on the Christmas tree twinkle. There's something about seeing Christmas lights through windows that has always made me feel nostalgic for home. From the outside, you can imagine the warmth within. Garland hangs around the outside of the building and on the slope of the hill is a display of nativity scenes set in a large box draped with lights. Farther up the hill, there is a sign of lights bearing the Amigos crest, a cross in the center of a heart circumscribed in a circle. At the crest of the hill, much farther up, the huge white cross gazes down serenely as always.

Chrsitmas is a beautiful time at Amigos. For the 15 or so new kids that have come to Amigos since I've been here it must be overwhelming. Kids come to Amigos for all different reasons; some were living on the streets because their parents could not afford to support them; some were abused at home; some have parents who have died or been killed. Some come directly from their family's homes, others have been living in other children's homes from an early age. It's hard to know what their Christmases have been like in the past. For the new kids here, the only certainty is that they've never experienced one quite like this.

If I let myself think too much about the holiday I'm afraid of the terrible homesickness that could overcome me, so I've kept it at bay somewhat, not letting myself imagine home. But we'll see how long I hold out. Since coming here I've never felt the absence of home so much, the warmth and comfort of it, the rightness and belonging of it. It's made me think about what home means, what family means, in a totally new way. More than anything else it's made my heart break for the kids. Each one left some sort of home once at some point to come to this new place. Some came with siblings, others with friends from other homes, others were left to face a new home all alone. For the 15 kids I've watched arrive, this is all new. And those are just those children who have arrived since I've been here. I learned a few days ago that since Amigos has been growing so quickly, this year just under 40 children will be experiencing Christmas here for the first time.

These past two nights we've had our first of many posadas. Posada is a tradition celebrated in many parts of Latin America. The way it's done here is  a group of family members or friends comes to the door of a house. There is another group inside and alternating back and forth the two groups sing a traditional song. The people outside represent Mary and Joseph looking for a place to stay for the night so that Mary can give birth to Jesus. The people inside are the innkeepers of Bethlehem. At first those inside tell those on the outside to go away; there's no room. But by the end of the song, realizing that the savior is at their doorstep, those on the inside sing for the "holy pilgrims" to enter, and then everyone eats and celebrates together. 

We'll have a posada at Amigos every night now leading up to Christmas, one at each of the major houses and dormitories of the campus. Last night's was at the school and we did it outside, on either side of the gate leading up to the school grounds. All of the school children and the teachers were on the "inside" and the teenaged boys walked across the long soccer field towards us as the pilgrims. In the darkness, their candles shed a beautiful glow, and on our side colored lanterns illuminated our song lyrics. The teenagers sang at the top of their voices. I was holding one of our little chiquitos who stared wide-eyed at the flame for all eight verses. Tonight's was held at the chiquitos' dormitory. We volunteers and several of the older boys were on the inside to boost the singing while the whole rest of the hogar came to the door. On both nights after the ritual, there was food and laughing. On both nights I watched the older boys scoop up the little ones in their arms for the singing and tumble around with them afterwards as everyone hung out eating snacks. And it felt so much like a family, it felt so much like a home, albeit one with more than 100 siblings.

All of these kids came to the door of Amigos once for the first time, a time that had to have been a type of lonely and scary and foreign that I can't even begin  to comprehend; that took a type of courage I don't know if I have. What each one of them has found, God willing, is a warm inner room of home and family, joy and love. It's not the same thing as the mom and dad that every one of these kids deserve, but my prayer for these kids at Christmas is that on nights like tonight it feels like family, it feels truly like home.

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Check out Amigos' countdown to Christmas on the Christmas fund facebook page! The pictures are adorable. Many of you reading this have already supported my year of service and Amigos. If you are interested, this is a great time of the year to continue supporting Amigos' mission. At Christmas time all the children get new clothes, their only new clothes for the year, and a toy. Donations to the Christmas fund make their Christmas special. Thank you all so much for all of your support!! Feliz Navidad y hasta pronto.

The Reunion

I was riding in the back of one of the pick-up trucks (one of my favorite things about living in Honduras) with the other volunteers returning from our vacation weekend when Levin spotted us. He sprinted up to the side of the car with his giant smile on his face. "My hermanito (little brother) is coming!" he squealed. My heart was bursting. "I know!" I laughed with him, and we collided in a hug as I jumped out of the truck.

Levin is the eight-year-old boy who ran away from the hogar on his very first day (you can read about it here). He was trying to go to the city where he had been living a state-run temporary children's home to get back to his little brother. He agreed to stay at the hogar on the condition that we would bring his brother. The team here had been working on bringing his brother even before Levin arrived at the end of August. Levin had adjusted to living at Amigos and seemed happy, but he never stopped asking about his brother. Now finally, at the beginning of November, he was coming. 

I had gotten the news before we left for our vacation and thank goodness we left. I wasn't allowed to tell Levin, just in case it didn't work out, and I don't think I would have been able to contain my excitement all weekend if we had been here at the hogar. When one of the volunteers told me the news, I surprised myself by instantly beginning to cry. I hadn't realized how much I, like Levin, had been hanging on to the promise of his brother coming to the hogar, how I had been storing up in my heart all the times Levin said something like, "He's very very little, my little brother. Much younger than me; he's 6. When is he coming?"

                

That Sunday night after dinner, I learned that I had been given the day off from teaching so that I could go into the city with Levin to pick up his brother from the court. I was elated. The next morning we were on the road by 6 a.m. I've never seen Levin sit so erect and still for so long in his life, but for the first half hour of the car ride, he barely budged. Sitting in the middle of the back seat, his eyes were glued out the window as though he could hardly believe we were going, only moving to throw grins back at me over his shoulder every few minutes. Levin is a challenging child in a lot of ways. He doesn't like to listen when he's told to do something, he whines for what he wants when he's not given it, and he throws terrible fits over absolutely nothing, things like not getting his way immediately. He's gotten a reputation among the other boys his age as a cry baby. As I've gotten to know him better over the last three months, it's been hard to see the unpleasant side of him come out, even as he continues to adjust to life here in this safe, stable environment. But I'm still crazy about him. As we drove, I thought about how having his little brother around might help him grow up a little bit. I could see being a good role model as a powerful force in improving his behavior.

Falling in love

"'It has done me good,' said the fox, 'because of the color of the wheat fields.'"

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This week I fell in love with Rana. It took me by surprise one day, like noticing the lateness of the hour; like the proverbial arrow in the heart. I was looking around the comedor for a place to sit at dinner, and I saw her slightly oblong head sitting with the other chiquitos at their little table. I went over and sat down beside her and her eyes lit up. “Rana!” she said, which is what she does when she’s happy. “Sapo no, rana sí!” she said, and I knew I was welcome at her table. She leaned up next to me, and stuck her tongue out. When I mimed her, she burst into giggles and I just hugged her. I felt at that moment like I could have hugged her forever and it wouldn’t have been enough. She was so happy sitting beside me, and I was so happy sitting beside her. We were both so happy. Our presence was a blessing, one to the other.

Rana means frog in Spanish, and it's the name I'm using here to refer to the special needs student I work with one-on-one each day. Her behavior is still very difficult, sometimes heart breaking. Just when I think we're making progress, we'll have a morning where she refuses to do any of the activities, like this morning for instance where I had to end by carrying her as she pounded my back with her little fists and cried, to her dormitory. But no matter how challenging she is in class, or how rewarding, I'm not going to be able to stop loving her. The moments like yesterday morning when I walked into class and her face lit up and she called out my name fill me with too much joy. Where does that come from? What has Rana done to elicit that love from me? And what have I done to elicit it from her? Forced her to sit still in class for two hours a day? Taught her how to trace? The answer is nothing, I've done nothing to deserve her loving me. The quote from my favorite musical of all times hangs on the cabinet in our bathroom: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Maybe that's the only way to understand.

Rana will not remember me for very long after I leave in a year from now. Her mind alights on concepts like a bee does on a flower, pausing for a moment, then moving on to the next bright blossom, sometimes slowly, lazily, sometimes with frenetic activity. If I visit, she may be glad to see me, for the first couple of months after I leave. But I’ll fade from her life. She is different from the other children, of course, but she helps puts my time here in perspective. The others may remember a little longer, but for all of them the reality is that I will leave and our lives will go on apart from one another. We’ll have this year to love each other, and then our love will need to take on a very different form, one I haven’t yet learned to recognize. So has it done us any good?

All of us volunteers talk about how we don't know how we'll be able to leave, but I mostly just don't let myself think about it. I did, though, this past weekend with one of my wonderful fellow volunteers, Emma. I said at one point how I couldn't stand the thought of us coming here and working our way into the life of this place for a year and then just going. "To these kids, we're going to be just one more person who left," I said. She corrected me: "One more person who loved."

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I re-read one of my favorite books of all times this past weekend on our vacation while I was doing a lot of processing on this topic. The quote above is from the book but it doesn't make a lot of sense without the context. Here's the chapter if you want to check it out.

Harvest Day

The corn was thick in the air as we walked up to Amigos' maize field. Like a display of fireworks, the ears hit their peak and gradually descended, each at a different moment.

It was harvesting day for Amigos' maize (corn) and all the jovenes, or teenaged, boys at the hogar had been enlisted to help. The 20 of them worked their way in a pack up and down the field, a row at a time. The dried out ears had to be pulled off and then catapulted to the nearest of several large piles that had been cleared out in the midst of the stalks. In nearly two acres of corn there were five or six piles, and that's why the corn flew through the sky at such a great height. It's also why, despite the heat, several of the boys seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Maize is what we gringos know as yellow corn, several months later. At the point where sweet corn would be ready to harvest, the stalks are doubled over and allowed to dry out for several more weeks. Once harvested, the hard, dry maize kernels are ready to be ground into the flour that constitutes the tortillas eaten at every meal - two tortillas a person, breakfast, lunch and dinner. The maize we harvested that day, in grains, weighed 4,500 pounds, enough for six months worth of tortillas here at the hogar.

Beginning at 8 a.m., the boys and other employees of Amigos' agricultural program, Agro as it's referred to here, were at work pulling the brown, crinkly maize cobbs off of doubled-over, waist-high stalks. The sun was fiercely strong by 9 a.m. and the work is best done in long pants and sleeves, since the dried stalks are prickly and scratchy, sometimes dangerously sharp, and lots of creatures (read snakes) like to live in the field. 

It's unsurprising that among the-high schoolers, there were those who didn't relish the hard work. What's more surprising is that some of them did. When I asked one of them why, he said throwing the ears the distance to the piles was fun, and that he liked seeing how far he could throw. Then he gave a reason I didn't expect. He said he also liked walking from plant to plant, pulling the corn off the stalks. To me, a first-time maize harvester, this seemed like the least fun part of the job. My legs and arms were scratched and itchy and I was constantly worried about what insect I would see next crawling out of a corn ear. Sweat was pouring down my face and I had a bloody gash on one hand from an especially sharp stalk. Harvesting maize is brutally hard work and that's the daily reality for many Honduran farmers, one that really struck me in the field. But this kid also saw the beauty in the process. He was able, even in a long-sleeved shirt drenched in sweat, to appreciate the kind of satisfaction harvesting your own food can bring.

Amigos uses about eight acres of farmland. Currently the hogar produces all its own milk, chicken, maize, and beans. Beans will be planted next in the same field as the maize. There are two harvests a year for both crops and each plant replenishes the soil for the next in a beautiful, ageless cycle. The boys at the hogar who work in the agro program are learning about a crop and a cycle that has been a staple in the lives of Hondurans for generations. I learned a saying in my first week here that is catchy in Spanish: Sin maíz, no hay país, which basically translates to, the country falls apart without maize.

We walked back from the field dehydrated and exhausted, at least I was, but also on a strange sort of high, the kind that comes from doing a hard job through to the end. The boys were making whooping noises for no reason, giddily laughing. The tortillas at lunch that day didn't taste quite the same.

A Day in the Life (Part 2)

We left off at 2:10, the end of the school day. Usually I need a rest after the end of a school day so I try to come home for awhile to take a break. I go back to the volunteer house and drink some coca-cola (I've become a total addict here; I think I crave the sugar), and to prevent myself from never moving from the sofa, I try to wash clothes.

Here, as in most of Honduras, clothes are washed by hand. Every house I've seen has what's called a pila, a waist-high, rectangular concrete basin that fills with water. Imagine a lid on the basin and a large square cut into the top of it. The two remaining sides have washboards and a drain built in and that's where clothes are washed. We have bars of clothes-washing soap that we rub on to the clothes, you scrub them, and then you dip b uckets into the basin for water to rinse. For the kids, washing clothes is a daily chore, and I try to once a day as well or else it really piles up. Even when I have to skim the floaties off the top of the pila water; even when I can never ring all the soap out of my jeans; even though all my clothes are now hopelessly stretched out; even when I find bird poo on the clothes hanging on the line (okay, that one is a stretch), there's something I love about washing my own clothes. Maybe it's the feeling each day that I've accomplished something, or the peacefulness of standing at the pila after a long day, or the camaraderie I feel with the other volunteers when we wash clothes together, or the mindless productivity that allows me to think and process the day's events, or the feeling that by washing my own clothes by hand each day I'm a little closer to the daily experience lived by a vast majority of the world's population.

After taking an hour or two at home to rest and wash clothes and do some lesson planning or internet work in the office, I try to spend the rest of my afternoon with the kids. Every afternoon is different. Sometimes I've made plans in advance with a kid; someone in one of my classes who wants help with the homework I've given or needs to get caught up on a lesson; someone I promised to study English with; one kid in particular who likes to go up to the big white cross on the hill and have me tell him a story. When the kids have birthdays, the volunteers take them into the closest neighboring village, a 20-minute walk down the road, with a few friends to buy soda and snacks, so those "birthday parties" are usually afternoon activities planned in advance. A lot of other times, there's nothing planned. I'll wander out to see what's going on in the rest of the hogar and if there's someone I can play with or talk to.

A Day in the Life (Part 1)

I have to apologize again for the long delay! This time my excuse is a broken computer keyboard, and things are not easy to get fixed here. The cliché is actually super true - we really do take a ton for granted. The ability to hop in a car and drive a computer somewhere it can be fixed, maybe even be left over night with confidence, and come back to get it the next day, for example, is not something I or anyone has here.

There is so much going on here all the time, I thought it might be good to bring everyone up to speed on what a typical school day is like here, at least for me. It should help to give a little context.

The day starts at either 6 or 5:30 a.m. when I get up to go to breakfast and do whatever internet chores or class prep I have to do (since we don't have internet in our house). Breakfast varies, but during the week it invariably includes beans and the signature corn tortillas. My favorite breakfast is hole beans (verses mashed) with steamed plantains and a delicious sauce they call mantequilla, which is kind of a liquidy, cheesy, sour cream. We have it every Monday with banana licuado, hot milk with some sort of add-in, a lot of times rice or oats.

The jóvenes, or teenagers, here get up at 5:30 every morning so that they can leave for high school by 6:15ish. It's a half hour walk and school starts at 7. So breakfast is a casual affair in the comedor, with kids, teachers, madrinas and padrinos filing in at different times depending on their schedules. At a little before 7, the metal bell outside the comedor that serves as the signal for the beginning of every activity here, rings for all the elementary school kids to line up outside to walk to our school, which sits behind the big soccer field at the back end of the campus. They all wear light blue button down shirts and brown pants. Their uniforms usually look really nice during this time each day (they get taken off and washed immediately after school); after a couple hours, it's amazing how un-bonito they look.

Visiting a Different Hogar

Sorry it's been  awhile since my last post. I sprained an ankle last weekend and it's really thrown me off. I'm still hobbling around like a viejita as the kids say but getting better!

This is a post I wrote several weeks ago. It's a sort of retrospective part 2 to the post "The Prodigal," and I have to warn from the beginning that's it's pretty depressing. I want to take a few steps back and tell a little bit about what it was like to pick up the three new boys from the state-run children's home. The experience has definitely been one of the most impactful of my time here so far, and I know I'll be feeling it's repercussions for a long time. By this time, this is an old story, but it's amazing how vividly and how often my experiences there recur in my memory.

The home is part a network of state-run institutions throughout Honduras. It's meant to be an impermanent home for children who have been removed from their families or picked up from the streets until they can go to more permanent homes like Amigos. Of course, this doesn't always happen and children can end up staying in one of these institutions for much longer. One of the boys we picked up had been there for three years.

Driving up to the home was exactly like driving up to a prison. That's not an exaggeration; it's located right next door to a prison and they share the same high solid concrete wall. At first we actually drove up to the wrong door, a massive solid metal entrance that could open to let a car through. Through a small square window (the Wizard of Oz absurdly comes to mind) a guard told us that this was the prison entrance and directed us to an identical doorway a bit further down the wall. 

We drove into the compound toward a large concrete building sitting in a field of dust and pale grass. It was about three-stories high and structured around a courtyard in the center. The prison feel didn't completely go away (especially since with it's stairways to the upper levels and concrete flooring, the courtyard looked a lot like a recreation area you might see in a jail), but the inside was painted with pale greens and purples and yellows which broke up the tedium a bit and reminded me that this was a home for children. As we entered, children stared down at us from the upper levels surrounding the courtyard and called out to us. Here, the children address each other as well as adults as tío and tía so that's what we heard: a chorus of high voices shouting sharply "tía! tía!" for our attention.

A Prayer for Peace

To walk in to the Amigos de Jesús chapel yesterday between 11 and 12, it would have been difficult to believe it was full of some 25 teenaged boys and two girls, anywhere from 13 to 22 years old. You would have found the capilla in reverent silence, save for the church music serving as a background to the kids' meditations. The Amigos de Jesús family was answering Pope Francis' request for prayers for peace.

The capilla at Amigos is the second floor of the office building and it is open air. All four sides have a concrete rail and through it you can see the mountains in the distance and overlook the rest of the Amigos campus. The service began with Amy, our co-director, explaining what was happening in Syria; that it is locked in a civil war, that there is destruction everywhere, that the government used chemical weapons against its own people, that those who suffer the most are the children. She showed a short news clip with some images of the fighting in the streets. All the kids were rapt with attention.

Then two of the boys took turns reading the text of the Pope's message delivered last Sunday calling for peace (you can find the text in English here). It was a profound moment. As I listened to the words in Spanish, sitting in this open-air chapel overlooking the beauty of the Honduran countryside, I felt the force of the Church's universality in a way I never had before. Those words redounded around the world in every type of setting, in every language.

Before the time for prayer, Amy called attention to the Pope's call for peace not only in Syria, but also around the world. Honduras, though not at war, is also not at peace, she said. We must pray for the people of Syria, and for peace in our own nation, and in our own hearts.

The Prodigal

Tonight, during the hour and a half each night between dinner and prayer circle where everyone hangs out outside, I played for a long time with a little boy who is new to the hogar. He is eight years old and has a smile that spreads in a long line across his face to light up big brown eyes, a high-pitched voice and a babyish laugh. He called me over to a corner of the porch to sit on the ground so I could watch him proudly assemble a tiny plastic top. He spun it as fast as he could a few times - "Mira! Mira!" - and then handed it to me to try. He was completely content in that moment, spinning his tiny top or watching me spin it, shrieking when it got too close to the edge of the porch, giggling every time it fell over. I could hardly believe that it was only a few days ago that I had sat with the same boy while he sobbed miserably into a plate of pancakes. 

I was one of the group who went to pick him up from one of the state-run children's homes four days ago. We picked up three new children from the home that day and he had been then one I had gotten to know the least on our trip. In contrast to the other two boys, he had been calm and unimpressed during the ride back to Amigos, half-smiling at times, but mostly quietly looking out the window. I don't remember once seeing the wide smile that has come to define his face for me now.

We arrived to the hogar as everyone does here: to the applause of the entire home gathered at the front gate. All three timidly got out of the car and walked through the crowd where they were introduced to the padrinos and madrinas, the caretakers of the boys and girls who live on-site and are with the children full-time.

I didn't see the littlest boy much that evening or the next day. At dinner in the comedor I made a point to sit with him, but he gave me a cold shoulder. At breakfast and lunch the next day I looked around to find him sitting sullenly, not speaking to the other boys around him. 

Late that afternoon, we new volunteers were in the midst of an orientation session when we learned that the boy had run away. It was 4:30 and we learned he had been gone about half an hour. We came out of the session to see search parties assembling. Two of the trucks full of people went out to drive in separate directions and a large group of boys and a few padrinos went out on foot. After night had fallen, the search parties began to return one by one. Staff members assembled a description of the child with photos and dropped them off at local police stations. We had to go to sleep that night not knowing where he was.

Photos of Copán Ruinas

Here are the long awaited photos!

To the right, this was a replica of a temple found at the site and reconstructed inside the museum. They really liked red paint, apparently. We think of the stoney colors that you see in the picture above, but because of paint flecks archeologists have found, we know that most of those buildings actually would have been brightly painted, many of them in this kind of bright red. It must have been really vibrant if you lived there, and really terrifying if you were a conquered visitor! We actually got to see those beautiful parrots (macaws). They were everywhere and with the ruins as a backdrop it made you feel like you were in a movie. The skulls below lined the bottom of where the king's throne would have been. A lot of the Mayan artwork we saw involved skulls.

 

 Finally, this is the coolest thing I think we saw. This stairway protected by a tarp is basically a giant history book. Engraved on those stones from left to right are the names and deeds of the Mayan kings from one of the dynasties. The stairway was like a stoney library. A carving of the ruler in the middle of the stair marks where his section begins. Though other nearby ruins are famous for more impressively large buildings, these are most famous for these stairs and the amazing artifact they are for researchers. Here's a little more info and a better picture. This is another really good picture of it.

¡Trabajos!

We found out about jobs yesterday! Of the six of us, four are working in the school here on site at Amigos. It is comprised mostly of Amigos kids, grades preschool through sixth, and a few children from the outside community. It's pretty necessary that we have our own school. In the neighboring village, there is only a one-room schoolhouse with a single teacher and 44 children. In our school, the student to teacher ratio varies, but some of the classes are as small as 8 or 9 children and the largest are around 18. After 6th grade, the kids go to a colegio, middle school and high school, that is a 30-minute walk away in the larger town of Macuelizo (also where we go to Mass on Sundays).

The school will be where I spend most of my time this year. The other volunteers have more clear-cut jobs, but I'm going to be more of a jack-of-all trades this year. The best way to tell you is probably to list my responsibilities:

• Librarian/ Library Teacher - My compulsive book hoarding finally has a productive outlet! I'm going to be in charge of the Amigos school library this year! The volunteer who came before me got it amazingly organized. A lot of my work will be organizing all the new books that are always coming in and managing check-outs and book returns. I'll also be teaching library classes an as-yet undetermined number of times per week, but I'll most likely have 4th, 5th and 6th grade possibly twice a week.
• 6th Grade English (as a second language) teacher - I'll only have this job through the end of the Honduran school year, which is in November. I'll have a class of eight 6th grade boys possibly up to 4 days a week for 45 minutes. I already love all the students in the class. They are really eager to learn and are all just really good kids. I was introduced to the class yesterday and several of them approached me later in the day to say how excited they were. I know 6th grade boys can be a devious bunch, but for now I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt!
• One-on-one special ed teacher - We have a really special little girl here who just doesn't fit into any of the other classes at the school. She's 12 years old and has special needs, so for two hours a day I'll be working with her one-on-one on basic school objectives and life skills. Over the past few weeks I already fell in love with her. I know this is going to be a big challenge, but I'm really excited to work with her, and I think it'll be very rewarding.
• Pre-school teacher's aide - Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays for an hour an additional 3 young children will be added to the pre-school class taught by another of the volunteers. This is to begin to acclimate these young children to the classroom while they're still too young to be in the class full-time. During that time, I'll be working with the teacher. I'll probably bring my special needs student with me to these classes as well so that she can have a classroom experience. It's all a big experiment, but we'll see how it works.

Beginning Life at Amigos

Sorry it's been awhile, but life since last Saturday has been a total whirlwind as we begin to settle into life at this amazing, terrifying, intimidating, beautiful place. The last week has been orientation for us new volunteers and when there aren't sessions planned we've been trying to use every spare moment to interact with the kids and begin to get to know them, and to get to know each other.

So what can I tell you about life here? As of this week there are 91 kids living at the hogar (home) and that number is going to grow in the next few weeks. They range in age from 1 and a half to mid-20's. They are mostly boys, but in 2012 they accepted their first girl and there are now at least 10 of them. The process has been slow but rewarding as we all try to meet them, and frustrating as we try to remember their names, but I feel like I'm making progress!

The thing that has struck me the most and that I now realize will be a process throughout this entire year, has been realizing just how much these kids have been through. The friendliest, most outgoing, sweetest kid here has been through hell to get to this place. The current volunteers tell us the kids who live at Amigos are here because they were in the Honduran child welfare system, but it's a very broken system in many ways so being "in it" means the situation must have been very bad. It's one thing to hear about or read about abuse, and it's another thing entirely to know a face and a name and the beginnings of a personality and then begin to think about what might have occurred in this child's past (and then add 90).

Adiós a una Ciudad Nueva

The streets of Copán Ruínas are cobbled with multi-colored stones and lined with multi-colored houses. The colors on every street are what stand out the most to me: pinks and lime greens, yellows and light blues. Roofs are sometimes corrugated steel but, more often, are large, red, almost Mediterranean-style concrete tiles. Many of the houses have gates facing the street that open into small courtyards, and often the windows on the street are open, with a thin curtain waving in the breeze.

The second thing you notice after the colors are the trees and plants. There is vegetation everywhere, tumbling out of windows, climbing in vines up walls, filling courtyards and gardens, bursting into more color with flowers. The trees are tropical – there are all kinds of varieties of palm trees – and they all seem to have fruits on them. Mangos and avocados are recognizable, but many of the fruits are new to me: tiny green ones of all different sizes, large green balls the size of a softball or larger.

Dogs wander about the streets and sometimes in and out of the homes. They bark and howl at each other all night. The other nocturnal pests are the roosters who crow continuously throughout the night (and during the day, too) with their ridiculously pompous squawks that still make me laugh – when I’m not trying to sleep. (To talk about the roosters, I’ve used the word for “yell” or “scream” to describe what they’re doing [gritar], but I’m always corrected to use the verb for “to sing” [cantar] – it’s the rooster’s “song” here, not its “squawk.” I love that.)

A Visit to the Mayan Temples

The name of the city where I’m staying is Copán Ruínas, and there’s a good reason for that. Yesterday I visited the Mayan ruins for which this city is famous. Tourists come from all over the world to see them. I have a ton of pictures of my own (the one above is from el internet - though I really did see those birds!), but I brought the wrong cord to Copán with me and I can’t get them onto my computer. You’ll just have to try to imagine and I promise to get the pictures up here as soon as I get back to Amigos!

Apparently the tall pyramid ruins in nearby Guatemala (as in a 20-minute drive) are also very famous, and our tour guide made the distinction this way: The ruins in Guatemala are the New York of the Mayans, with buildings impressive as sky scrapers; but the ruins at Copán are the Paris, the capital of art and culture (sorry to all you New Yorkers who read this).

The story of how we had a guide at all is worth telling. The woman who sold us our tickets around 2:30 said the museum, which had come highly recommended, closed at 4 and the ruins at 4:30, so we ought to see the museum first and then go to the ruins. We followed her advice and at about 3:20 headed over to the make-shift building near the road to hire a guide, but when we got there, we learned that the last guide had left for the day because, in reality, the ruins close at 4.

We were understandably pretty frustrated. All of a sudden this small boy, probably about 10 or 11 years old, materialized near us. He spoke vey rapid Honduran Spanish and said something about helping us find a guide. We politely turned him down and began to walk off in the direction of the ruins to see what we could before they closed.

A Welcome Home - Honduran Style

When I pulled through the front gate of Amigos de Jesus, there was a crowd waiting to meet me, and they were clapping.

One of the current volunteers later said it was a poor showing; usually, new volunteers are welcomed by the entire Amigos de Jesus family, 85-children strong, along with staff. To me, the cheering welcome party seemed enormous. The windows of the truck they had picked me up in at the San Pedro Sula airport were open; to wave made me feel like I was making a pretense of some kind of royalty, but to not respond felt strange too. I think the result was a couple half-hearted hand gestures of some kind, and definitely a lot of awkwardness.

As soon as I stepped out, a little girl ran towards me and, without losing any momentum, right into my arms to hug me tightly. Several of the other young children were not far behind. The whole situation would later resemble many of my experiences on my first night at Amigos. There’s uncertainty and hesitancy, and discomfort too, sometimes painfully so, but the children’s hugs make it all seem worth it. From what I’ve heard from this year’s volunteers, it sounds like that’s an experience that will persist.

Ready, Get Set....

Hi friends and family!

This is just a quick post to let you know you've come to the right place :) This is indeed the illustrious page where I'll be writing about my experiences for the next 13 months as a volunteer with Amigos de Jesus, a home for orphaned children in Honduras (check them out here). Every few weeks I'll be posting here about my doings down South.

Thank you to all of you who have supported me thus far. I cannot tell you how grateful I am, and how inspired I have been by the outpouring of generosity I have experienced over the last few weeks. Asking for money from my friends, family and church was very difficult, but the reward has been seeing the incredible generosity and prayerful support that surrounds me on all sides. And I do believe very much in the work that is being done in this home for children; I know those funds have gone to good use.

The countdown has officially begun! A week from Saturday, August 3, I fly out of Philadelphia and begin this adventure. It doesn't quite seem real, and neither do the goodbyes that will need to be said in just a few days. Thankfully, there's plenty to do to prepare so I don't have to think too much about that part just yet! And there's also my growing excitement, along with all the nerves, to get me through the next few days of anticipation.

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