"What Makes YOU Come Alive?"

So yes, it is now December and I believe I updated this blog ONCE in November. I cannot stress enough how quickly time is passing here. I cannot believe Christmas is less than two weeks away! It has been a different experience to be hanging up Christmas decorations and listening to Christmas music in 80+ Fahrenheit weather. If I take nothing else from this experience, I'll at least know that I enjoy the four seasons and that I don't think I'd like to live anywhere with constant "summer" weather. (Daddio, I know you're probably shaking your head right now and thinking I'm crazy since you mention you're dying for some nice sun on your face ;) )

Where to begin? Well November was definitely my hardest month here thus far. I have now been here at the hogar 3 months ago today and have been here in Central America for over 4 months. Time is flying but also going very slow... I feel like I've been here for a lot longer. However, the beginning to mid-November time was my roughest point thus far. I was very homesick and there were a few days in particular that I wanted to come home. However, through prayer and the help of my community members, and of course these beautiful boys, I found incredible strength. I also in this time received a quote from a friend that really helped me, "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." (Thanks PMF)

Something I have also been working on since being here is making sure I am being present. It's hard to get wrapped up in what I'm missing out on at home (especially with the holidays) but each day I do my best to remind myself of why I'm here and that is to love these boys and be here FOR THEM for these next 11 months.

I've started to have some amazing conversations with some of these boys. They're really starting to open up to me and tell me about their past, what they've had to go through to get here to Amigos. I have realized just how incredibly lucky I am to have two living parents who have always loved and cared for me and done what is best for me. I am lucky to have 5 healthy siblings who are also incredible support systems and with whom I have countless ridiculous memories.

Thank you to all of you for your continuous support. I cannot say enough how much your emails and letters all mean to me and how incredibly fortunate I am to have all of you. I apologize for the lateness of my responses to those letters and emails but I know you all understand. It is because of all of you that I am able to find strength to continue to be here. On some of my worst days I have received emails, letters and packages filled with inspiring words to boost my desire to serve here at Amigos. So please, keep them coming! :)

Photos!

So I will describe these photos top to bottom:

1. Me and Noe (newest ingressed child here at Amigos and my cuddle buddy) on Christmas Eve

2. One of the dogs had puppies... Olvin (9) and one of the puppies

3. Gerson David (12)

4. Dancing at THanksgiving festivities with Jose Luis and Mario

5. Holding the new puppies with community member, Regina

6. After shopping for all the boys Christmas presents... in the back of the truck with all of their gifts and community members- Alan, Grace and Chris (talk about a FUN ride home!)

7. A group of the boys

8. Me with two boys Jesuan (11) and Cristian (16)

“Can I Tell You About BEAUTY?!”

So I’ve obviously been bad at updating this blog with some of the fun stories that have occurred while here at the hogar so I thought I’d just go ahead and tell a few of them.

So this has happened a couple times and I wanted to share it with all of you because it makes me smile every time. We take some of the boys out on bikes after dinner, to Posas Verdes, to get drinks and treats occasionally. By the time we start or return, it’s usually dark. This is one of my favorite things because as we ride bikes or walk in the pitch black there are TONS of fireflies on either side of us as we walk. You can’t really see too far ahead of yourself so you have to either look out for the potholes in the torn up road or get a nice surprise when you bike through them. It’s a blast to hear all the laughing that goes on as we ride through the dark, beautiful to see all of the fireflies on either side of you and then absolutely breathtaking to look up at the countless stars above you.

This past Sunday I made ratatouille Stromboli for dinner with Rita and of course, knowing me, there was music on…BLARING! As we were finishing up dinner I decided, that after cooking for 2 and a half hours, we should celebrate the amazing food that awaited us in the oven. I then put on “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root (SHOUT OUT TO MARITA!) and we began to dance around the kitchen pulling Regina in to dance with us. A moment where I sat there and was just thankful that I’m here with some amazing people who will challenge me and let ME shine!
The other night I was walking up to the social work office, with Grace, and Oscar (one of the boys) stopped there with the light shining behind him and his silhouette standing before us with his arms OUTSTRETCHED for a hug. Definitely a moment that just made me smile, not a word was said… afterwards we just continued on.

On Monday and Friday nights we play soccer, after dinner, with the boys. Sometimes one of the padrinos, Padrino Luis, joins in. The electricity here is CONSTANTLY going out and so this past week it went out both Monday and Friday nights while we were playing soccer. We then cannot see a thing so are forced to stop however sometimes some of us stick around and still try and play or we just sit around and admire the thousands of lightning bugs around us and just lay on the ground and look at the stars.

Every Tuesday night we have "Silent Night". After prayer there is no music, talking and for this month we decided as a community to sacrifice the use of lights on Tuesdays and Fridays. It makes Tuesday nights really fun because I write all of my letters by candlelight. :)

Anyways, this past Tuesday we had some visitors. About 2 months ago one of the dogs here had two puppies in a shack behind our house. It's been really cool to watch their growing process (opening their eyes and learning how to walk). Two of my community members went to grab the puppies because they were yelping and they brought them into the house to play. We all sat around in the candlelight and fed the puppies some cornflakes and played with them. TONS of fun!

Our boys are VERY intelligent. They always love inventing things out of stuff laying around. One of our fans broke the other day so we threw it out in our trash. I was in the social work office the other day doing some work when my community member, Alan, came to tell me I had to come see something. I walk out of the office to see one of the boys, Gerson David, with his head over the ledge of the patio and a chord plugged into the side of one of the padrino's house. As I got closer I saw that he had taken our fan (with the part that had the 0,1,2,3 speed option and the little motor with a piece of plastic pointing out for the front of the fan to go on which was missing) and had attached a corn cob to the little point sticking out of the fan. He was using the speeds to dig a hole into the ground with the corn cob!

Another one of our boys, Mendoza, loves to play imaginary sports with you. He will pretend to kick a soccer ball to you and when you return it he'll gracefully receive it or pretend it has bounced off the ground or off of a wall or some object around and he has been known to entertain himself (along with volunteers) for hours upon end. These kids are AMAZING!

Wednesday night is community activity night and this past Wednesday our community decided to play sardines, in the dark, in the house. If you don't know what sardines is, it is when one person goes to hide and the other people have to search for that person. Once you find the person hiding you have to hide with them. You can imagine how entertaining this was with 8 full grown adults. We blared music allowing people to hide without hearing where and would search for people when the songs were done, singing along to each song of course! :)

The Usual Week

Last week we were given our jobs and I was excited to hear that I have been given the position as one of the social workers here on the Amigos property along with Grace and Regina, two other volunteers. This job entails working with those boys who are older and have left the orphanage to live in the surrounding communities outside of the Amigos property (Posas Verdes, aka PV, and Macuelizo). The social work position entails a lot of paperwork which is time consuming but interesting because through a lot of that paper work, and going through the boys files, I am learning a lot of their “stories”. Also giving the boys, whose families and loved ones are still alive, phone calls and house visits. This job will definitely help me work on my Spanish which is something I continue to be frustrated with.

It’s a matter of challenging myself not to speak English to the other volunteers around the boys (which is disrespectful in itself) and to take my own time to study. I find myself not talking to the padrinos or some of the older boys because I am not confident in my Spanish. This is upsetting because for those of you who know me I am NOT the type to not engage in conversation… I love getting to know people and hearing their stories. I think this lack of confidence also comes with the fact that there are times where a padrino or nino/joven will say something in Spanish and I don’t understand it and they do not repeat it and instead laugh. That’s mega frustrating. It’s an uncomfortable feeling having people talk in Spanish to each other, know that you don’t understand, and laugh and look at you… I’m constantly wondering, “What did I do”, or “Why are they laughing at me”?

NORMAL WEEK AT THE HOGAR:
I figured I should probably go through a “normal week at the hogar” with all of you. Every weekday we have community prayer at 7 AM and end each day with community prayer by 9 PM. Monday nights we have “Spanish night” in our house after prayer circle and we only talk in Spanish with encouragement from Chris (the volunteer who had the idea to start Spanish night).
Prayer circle happens 2 or 3 times a week and consists of all the boys, padrinos, and volunteers standing in a circle, holding hands, with 4-5 boys assigned to a certain night to pray aloud with their intentions. Afterwards we all say an Our Father and Hail Mary together. Afterwards we walk around to everyone and say, “Buenas Noches”. It’s a pretty amazing experience and one that I always look forward to because after a day of disciplining and having certain kids that drive you crazy it’s great to either shake their hand or get a hug from them and realize that tomorrow is a NEW day.

Tuesday night is “Silent Night” and after community prayer around 9 PM there is NO more talking in the house, no music, no electronics used. It’s a great time to write letters, read, reflect, go to bed early, or do whatever with your personal free time.
Wednesday night is “Community Night”. Two community members are assigned to make dinner. After eating we have a community reflection (once a month is Catholocity which is a question posed about Catholicism that we discuss- really great) and then afterwards we have a community activity. This could include watching a movie, playing a board game, asking goofy questions, or playing soccer outside on the field bringing in some house rivalry. Wednesday nights are a lot of fun.

Thursday night we have Celebracion where everyone at the hogar gathers in our volunteer chapel to exchange the sign of peace, sing, and listen to the readings of the day. It’s so much fun listening to the boys getting into the music and singing along!
Friday night we get to lay low. After dinner the volunteers all gather up at the Amigos cross (a 25 ft. cement cross up on the hill) to say the rosary with the boys. Rosary is optional so it’s neat to see the large amount of boys that decide to participate. Afterwards the boys get to watch a movie while, most times, some of the jovenes (older boys) and a few of us volunteers play futbol. After the movie and the boys all go to bed we are all able to come back to the house and bake something, veg. and share ridiculous stories from the day, or watch a movie.

Saturday we are able to wake up and eat, the special breakfast the cooks make, with the boys. Afterwards we are able to either go back to bed or veg. until 9 AM community prayer. After prayer we are supposed to play with the boys till lunchtime at noon. This usually means taking the boys out on bikes to play and swim in the river or heading to the park in Macuelizo. The rest of the day is pretty low key and then Saturday night is basically just like Friday night.
Sunday we get up for Mass in Macuelizo. Sometimes we walk, the half hour, to Macuelizo for Mass which is a really great experience. It’s fun crossing the river with the boys. After Mass we come back for lunch and then veg. for the day. Sunday night is another “community night” and two people make dinner for everyone. Afterwards we go over our “Biz List” as a community and take care of all business.

That’s basically a normal week with all of our individual work thrown in there.

Mas Fotos!

The beach pictures are from Roatan.

The rusted ladder is the scary bridge we climbed to get to West Bay.

The cross is at the top of the Amigos property (standing 25 ft. tall).

The picture of the house is my home for the next year! :)

La Playa, Helado, y Actividades... Si, Por Favor!

We returned this past Monday (the 12th) from Roatan for a long weekend vacation. It was B-E-A-U-tiful! We stayed in a little house that was across the street from the beach. You would literally walk out of our mini-resort and see palm trees with white lounge chairs and a backdrop of blue, turquoise, and completely clear water. It literally looked like the picture you find and put as your desktop background on your computer when it’s freezing cold and all you want to do is go to the beach, feel the warm sun on your face, stick your feet in the sand and listen to the peaceful noises the ocean has to share.
We got into Roatan Friday (the 9th) right around dinner time. We went out for pizza and arose early Saturday morning to start our activities. After getting breakfast a few of us went kayaking. As we were kayaking we realized that we were able to see right down to the bottom and decided to rent snorkel gear after lunch. The snorkel gear cost $5.00 to rent for an entire 24 hours. We decided to rent three sets between the nine of us. We then went straight out and while some snorkeled all the way out, through the entire bay and out into the ocean, a few of us decided to swim after them. We saw all sorts of different fish… some pretty plain and some that were spectacular and radiating with color!
As a few of us were out snorkeling the others came out in kayaks and before we knew it all nine of us were out in the ocean, knocking each other out of the kayaks and swapping snorkel gear. Talk about a great time!
Afterwards we laid out on the beach for a while and then went back to the house to get ready for dinner. We picked a great weekend to go on vacation, since we don’t have a TV in the house here at the hogar, because the Honduras/U.S. soccer game (winner would go to the World Cup) was on. The nine of us got dressed up and sat in a Thai restaurant, owned by a French man, watching the Honduras/U.S. soccer game at the bar. Talk about a night of culture! After the U.S. won J, we went out for drinks. We went to multiple bars including one where you were required to "walk the plank" to get into which meant crossing a 1 ½ ft. wide plank over the water into a platoon boat. We ended up at a bar with live music. I, of course, couldn’t help but dance and had a BLAST! I think what made it so much fun was that random people at the bar would come up and sing with the band, including freestylin’ to English songs, in Spanish and the indigenous languages of the Caribbean. Everyone was getting into it and just was a really fun atmosphere.
Sunday morning I woke up and walked with Erica to West Bay. It was about an hour walk down the beach from West End. On our walk we encountered sea urchins, slippery rocks, a rusted old bridge that we HAD to cross and finally made it to our destination which was even more beautiful and definitely worth the walk. Roatan is known for the West Bay beach. After snorkeling some more and laying on the beach, others from our community made their trek towards the West Bay beach as well. Each one with stories about crossing the rusted old bridge (which I took pics of and will have to upload- there were holes in the middle of the stairs to get up to the bridge and once at the top it felt like the wind was strong enough to blow the bridge over… but don’t worry Mom, Erica is a Civil Engineer and I had her look at the bridge before we crossed and she gave her approval ;) ).
Erica and I left (by water taxi) the rest of the gang to take back the snorkel gear. Afterwards we decided to grab nothing else but ice cream and ate it on the edge of a pier with our feet dangling off looking out at the beautiful ocean. Once everyone returned from the beach, Rita and I started to make community dinner in the house and we all ate outside on the porch. After dinner, we went to a double deck pier, climbed up to the second level and laid on our backs to admire the stars. Again, pretty awesome night!
We arose early Monday morning to travel the 11 hours back to the hogar by boat, taxi and 2 buses. SO worth it!
What’s the latest and greatest this week? Since we didn’t start work until Tuesday, this week has FLOWN by. Clare, our Volunteer Director, is coming today (Friday the 16th) to visit until Wednesday. We’re all really looking forward to seeing her! Especially the newbies b/c we are all wanting to bounce new ideas we have off of her as well as feel some relief in what we each are struggling with not only individually but as a community. The next 5 days should be very fruitful!
Hope you are all doing well! Please keep those prayer requests coming and know that you are all in my thoughts! It’s been hard not talking to everyone whenever I want and having to update people on my life through a blog. So, please don’t hesitate sending me updates on your lives as well! I want to hear how you’re all doing… email is hard to transfer all of these to the house laptop so if you’re interested in being my pen pal that’s great too! My address should be on one of my most recent blogs!
All my love,
Kate

A Million Questions, Let the Journey Begin...

So Ive had this post for almost a week and a half, however our internet continues to go out so bear with me... ENJOY!

Hola Amigos!
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to compile an update. However, I just realized that I can start writing these blogs on the laptop we are given in the volunteer house and end up uploading it to the blog to save my hour of internet each week.
Anyways, I have now been at Amigos for almost four weeks! Time here has been amazing and I’m really enjoying myself thus far.
We arrived Saturday, the 19th, in the evening just in time for dinner. As we pulled up in the van the boys all ran to the gate and greeted us there, with Father Dennis O’Donnell, cheering with the biggest grins on their faces! At dinner we all introduced ourselves and then afterwards the boys were surprised with a piñata. One of the padrinos, (Honduran couples that come to live on the property to act as parental figures to the boys) Luis, was in charge of the piñata. He was getting so into it and excited and in that moment just felt like one big family as everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves. The evening continued with 2 hours of dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album (which has been SUPER popular here in Central America ever since his recent death- pretty sure I’ve heard Thriller more here in the past 2 months than I have in my entire life!). It was a lot of fun to watch the boys dance and then for all of the volunteers to join in shortly after.
I also received a nickname that night that some of the boys still call me today. For some reason, that night, they thought I looked like Hermione Granger (from Harry Potter … most of the boys are obsessed with the movies). My hair is shorter after I got it cut in Guatemala and that day I scrunched it so it looked really curly. Also, the boys are not able to say “Kate” so the ones that can… do… and all of the rest call me “Kahtee” (when they draw me pictures or write me cards they write “Kati” or “Cati”). It’s pretty fun! Some of the volunteers just call me “Kahtee” as well.
Sunday we celebrated Mass in the chapel (which is the third level of the volunteer house) with Fr. Dennis O’Donnell. Afterwards we played with all of the boys and relaxed.
The first week was basically just us getting used to the property and the surrounding area. We went on a couple trips to Posas Verdes (a small town about a 10-15 min walk from the Amigos property) and Macuelizo (the main town in this area). We were also introduced to and had meetings with a few of the employees here at Amigos.
The past three weeks have been spent shadowing the current volunteers in action. We have observed classes, gone on social work trips (visiting families of some of the boys), delivered checks to those in our BECA program (a scholarship program for students in the outside communities), cleaned the boys dormitories, etc. After shadowing the volunteers we will be choosing our jobs at the beginning of next week.
I’m interested in taking over a few jobs here and looking forward to what I will accomplish in those jobs. My top choice at the moment is to be working in the social work area here at the hogar. My Spanish isn’t up to par at the moment so in order to take on that job I will need to really focus on improving my Spanish. I’m also incredibly interested in helping out with the BECA program and again, this requires me to improve my Spanish since I would be working with individuals in the surrounding communities. This is a challenge I want to overcome.
Last week I went I shadowed the older volunteers on a social work trip. We went to visit Nahun’s family (Nahun is mute, but can understand what is said to him). His mother didn’t know we were coming and so it was a beautiful blessing to watch them visit with one another both with FULL smiles. We also met Nahun’s two younger brothers and Nahun’s baby niece. Their home was two rooms, 1 for sleeping and the other with a bed and kitchen in it. AMAZING to think about all the rooms I have in my house and how some of them aren’t even used on a frequent basis. It just opened my eyes to a lot that I need to continually thank God for. I want to be involved in social work to have those constant reminders throughout this next year.
Another job idea I have, and am exceptionally excited about, is being the new physical education teacher. Physical education at the moment consists of the Honduran teachers throwing the kids a soccer ball and letting them go. Not all of the boys are interested in playing soccer so most of them sit out. Therefore, I look forward to taking over this position and creating fun and new activities for the enjoyment of all of the boys. I also plan on starting up a mini sports league for the boys here with at least futbol and ultimate frisbee as options.
Just excited b/c right now the newbies are all in a limbo stage and have lots of time on our hands (which I’m sure we’ll be dying for in a month or so) and sometimes we feel just frustrated b/c we want to get to work.