April Highlights

As I recover from Chikungunya (fun to say, not fun to have!), I thought I would use my prescribed bedrest to attempt to summarize the highlights of the last two months.

The beginning of April brought an awesome group of volunteers from York House School in Vancouver (Fellow Canadians!  Woo hoo!).  We went to tour Virginia Sapp, the girls’ high school.  It was great to see the girls in their element and the school facility was beautiful…  It was much nicer than the high school I went to! (Sorry Aldershot!)

The following weekend I spent a weekend with the girls in Santa Lucia, teaching piano lessons and helping study for their English exams.  We went on a number of walks through the town and a few of us rented boats and paddled into the lagoon in the centre of town.

The girls’ residence in Santa Lucia is a beautiful property.  I was grateful to wake up to such an amazing view and to see the property come alive with the 15 teenage girls who were there that weekend.  It was way less daunting than it sounds!

On the day that “my” team (aka the team from St. Luke’s that included my parents) arrived, we took all the kids to Parque Obrero for the day.  The park was about 40 minutes away, just outside of Valle de Angeles.  There was swimming, games, soccer and horseback riding.  Doña Alejandrina and Profe Martha cooked a traditional Honduran lunch.  It was so much fun that I hardly felt guilty that the campus was empty when my team arrived!

Lots happened the week St. Luke’s was here.  We took a bunch of kids out for lunch after church to our favourite (or most visited…) local fast food restaurant…

My mom and Ros were busy coordinating an art project where El Hogar’s most talented artists painted over 70 canvases that will be used as a fundraiser in Toronto in the fall.  They even let me create a masterpiece…

It was also the week of the school presidential election.  The two parties – Movimento Lempira and Movimento Futuro de Honduras – participated in a political rally…

 A presidential debate...

 

And finally the election.  The volunteers sat in at each polling station as international observers and watched the incredibly organized and official process of voting.

We also celebrated Earth Day!  The night before, the director asked us to produce 100 green and brown shirts from the bodega for the kids to wear.  Miraculously, we did, and with these they formed a tree!

Here are some more fun times in April...