New Volunteers

 Volunteers can start their assignment in either January or July. Originally, Allen and I had applied in July for volunteer assignments starting in January, but we ended up delaying for 6 months because we knew we were going to need a month of immersion Spanish and would have a tough time fitting that in, but also because our latest grandson was due in November and we wanted to spend time helping with the new baby before we left for a year. It worked out well for us as we got to spend a lot of time (a week for Allen and a whole month for me!) in March helping out with the new baby and enjoying the other four grandchildren when my daughter-in-law returned to work. Thus, we began our volunteer "year" (13 months) in July with a large group of wonderful young women that have come to be good friends and are enriching our experience tremendously.

 It is January now and we have a new group of volunteers, so Allen and I (as well as the rest of our volunteer group) are now the "experienced" ones. The new group is small; composed of 3 women, one each from the US, Colombia, and Curacao (an island off of Venezuela that is part of the Netherlands). The US and Colombia volunteers are in their 20s and the volunteer from Curacao is more mature similar to Allen and I. Since Cormac left in December, Allen is now the only male volunteer with over a dozen (mostly) young women. I think he is enjoying the experience, although he would probably appreciate some more male volunteers. I am pretty sure the "girls" are enjoying having a handy man like Allen around.

With the arrival of the new volunteers, we are re-energizing our efforts to speak only Spanish in the common areas of San Vicente. Hopefully this will accelerate the learning process for me. The new group just completed their two weeks of training and will begin their work on Monday. The training schedule for the volunteers brings me back to last July, which seems such a short time ago and yet it could be years in what I have learned.

One of the things that has changed since my training in July is the policy about photography. It is now acceptable to post pictures of the kids' faces so I am including some acceptable photos of the children that Allen and I spend the most time with:

My Home (San Mateo)

"TV Dinner"

Allen's kids at Christmas

February 3 is a special day in Honduras as it is the Feast Day of Our Lady Suyapa, which is a form of the Virgin Mary that was declared the Patroness of Honduras. I mentioned this a few blogs ago while describing the Suyapa Basilica. On February 3, many Hondurans and other people from Central America make a pilgrimage to the Basilica. On the NPH ranch, the day was celebrated with waking the kids up at 6AM with fireworks and songs in front of a display with the Suyapa figure, a procession in the afternoon where children carried the display and flowers to the church for mass, and afterwards a special dinner (balleadas with meat!) and, of course, cake.









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