Hot to Cold

This has been a week of extremes on Roatan. We began the week with the hottest day of the year thus far, 94 degrees on our deck. We also had a scheduled power outage that afternoon during our tutoring time with the kids. I suggested to Susan that we do our tutoring from the beach, and she thought that was a fine idea, so, after a very brief English lesson in the classroom, we headed to the beach behind the church. The kids had a great time, of course.

The next day was cooler as a storm system moved our way. By Wednesday we had probably our coolest day so far - 61 degrees and very, very windy. Brrrrrr!! The windows were closed, blankets on the bed and socks on the feet. The remainder of the week was very cool, windy, and rainy. Our jungle garden was happy to get the rain. It was raining very hard on Wednesday, so we did not have tutoring.

The girls and Concepción came up to the house on Thursday to finish their purses. Maria and Jessie were ready to finish theirs, too, so they also came to the house. I gave them the option of sitting out on the covered deck or inside. Maria and Jessie chose to work outside and the rest came inside. That made for a lot of running back and forth for me as I helped each one finish the bottoms of their purses and then add the straps.

                                                  Leidy working on the strap.

 Maria and Jessie working out on the deck. That's little Jesslee leaning against her mom. She is about 4 years old. She was very good despite having no toys to play with.  She amused herself by crawling behind and under furniture and 'hiding'. I would pretend to not know where she was and then suddenly 'find' her. Great fun!

                                       A close-up look and Jessie's colorful purse.

                                  Concepción chose to work inside at the kitchen table.

                                    Julissa finished first, followed closely by Maria and Jessie.

They were so proud, and I was proud of them!! Maria and Jessie wanted to make black purses next, so I sent them home with the black yarn. Oscar has already collected 100 tab tops for them, enough to make two more purses.

Only Karla did not finish her purse. She was the only one who did not take their materials home last week, so she fell behind. I sent her home with what she needed to finish.

We worked longer than usual because so many of them were just about finished and didn't want to stop. At 4:15 we wrapped it up and were ready to go when Karla gave me a handwritten list. I asked "what is this?" She said it was homework that they needed for the next day. It was in Spanish. I asked what it said, and she didn't know. I pulled up the Google translator and entered the list. Domestic abuse, child abuse, violence from freedom of expression, etc. I asked "ok, so what do you need?" They needed to find five examples, photos,  of each category on that list,  then to print them out and hand them in the next day. That did not go over well. I asked Karla why she waited until 4:15 to tell me this. She shrugged. I asked Jessie if she also needed this. Yes, and so did Leidy. I called to Don, who was sitting in the other room writing, and enlisted his help. He was also not happy. He thought we would be working on that until 8:00.  We began finding images, saving them to a flashdrive while Don figured out how to print them using as little paper as possible. I also called Susan for moral support. She agreed that the assignment was ridiculous, given that none of the kids have computers or printers at home. She had already talked to their teachers once about this, and said that another visit seemed in order. What will they do when we are all gone for several months? We asked them that. They shrugged. After about an hour of frantic (on my part) work, we had four sets of five pages of photos (Nelson also needed a set) and I was able to drive them back to the colonia. I felt bad for Maria and Concepción who still had to go home and make dinner.