Rose Blogging from Tierra Santa

Hello from Rose -

Monday, we had breakfast at 7:00 at the hotel and then loaded onto the bus for the Hogar at 8:00. My job today was to prep the Pre-K room for painting. It’s a very nice room on the second floor with lots of windows and ceramic floors. I was able to tape and clean up with Heather before we ended our a.m. work shift. At 1:00 we broke for lunch and then headed out to find Pre-K classroom furniture and storage bins.

We went into Comayagua to a place called Plastic Anna. It was considered to be their Target but it was no bigger than a small hardware store. We purchased bins and storage boxes but could not find tables and chairs. We found a place called Gordon’s and they had the cutest primary colored wooden table and chairs that had pencil shaped legs with actual erasers on the bottom. Downtown is a very bustling place with narrow streets and loads of people traveling about on the narrow uneven sidewalks, too unusual to describe. Shopping here was a cultural experience unlike any other I have witnessed.

Tuesday we began our day by having a cultural experience. We visited a brick yard where each brick was made by hand with wet mud, placed in wooden molds and eventually baked in kilns to dry. No automation here or fancy tools…only hard labor with bare hands and homemade molds. The children around the neighborhood came running, hoping for candy or other goodies. I bet 30 kids arrived in less than 5 minutes. Luckily, Heather had a bag of candy on the bus and each child was given a treat. We commented that we wished we had had a few boxes of clothing to leave behind for these children.

We arrived at the Hogar about 9:00 and began our projects for the day. I continued with painting the Pre-K room. We decided to paint two lower walls with chalk board paint so that the children could use chalk on the walls. We were amazed that the paint store had this product. Nothing is easy to come by here so this was a real accomplishment. The room is really shaping up. Later today, another crew will paint the walls with a second coat of light blue and begin our clean up before beginning the construction of the wooden shelves which will be installed all along one wall. I have jump rope classes this afternoon so I will continue painting tomorrow. Tomorrow, the fun stuff: placing our cute tables and chairs, storage items and all the wonderful posters and education materials into the educational room. We’ll be sure to take pictures before and after so that everyone can see the progress we made to successfully complete this amazing project.