St Vincent de Paul
The volunteers at El Rancho NPH Honduras are housed in the Casa de San Vicente. It took us a few days to realize that it was named after St Vincent de Paul which is the organization that Al has been involved with for several years now. In some ways the lodging feels more special to us now as we have had high respect for the organization and for St Vincent de Paul who started it. After not really knowing what kind of lodging we would have and expecting the possibility of shared bathrooms and sleeping porches, we were happily surprised with our own spacious room and bathroom. Al, of course, has a lengthy list of items to acquire to turn this into a home for the next year. But for my part, I think I have everything I need. We even have a working washing machine for everyone in Casa de San Vicente – at least it is working right now – although we also have back up supplies for hand washing if needed.
Our kitchen is shared with the other 11 volunteers, 6 of
which are new like us. So far we have eaten most of our meals from the ranch
kitchen with the normal cuisine of rice, beans, and plaintains. We bring plates
from our shared kitchen to the Cocina Grande to be filled and taken back to the
volunteer house to eat. In a few weeks we will be assigned to a group of
children (Hogar) and will be eating dinner with them. We use the shared kitchen
for supplements to the ranch food such as coffee, fruits, chocolate, etc. But these
supplements can only be obtained on our free weekends which will be every other
weekend.
We found out today that the ranch is 2,100 acres or 3.3 square miles. It is huge and we are happy to be able to do our morning walks within the confines of the ranch. There are some hiking trails that lead up to view points and three dams where it is possible to swim in the backwaters.
We are in training for another week before we start our “real”
jobs and are assigned a Hogar. Next week we will have more interactions with
the kids in the 6-8PM evening times. We are slowly getting more opportunities
to speak with the locals. Last night we
attended a pizza party put on by 30 young men and women from Italy who were
visiting for 2 weeks and probably spoke more English than Spanish. I met a few
Tias who kindly welcomed me and conversed in a style of Spanish (slow) that I
could actually understand. Al and I joined a game of cards with some young
girls (under 10) who had a partial deck of cards and were playing a game that
we could not figure out except that the dealer always seemed to win! Al also
played basketball with some young boys and realized that Yoga doesn’t
necessarily prepare you for basketball 😊
Just a note that posted pictures of the kids will be limited
due to the policy here at the ranch.
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