http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/ en-us 2006-10-09T17:44:57-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002690.html I spent my first day back from Honduras walking around my neighborhood in Winchester. It was a perfect day. Beautiful fall sunlight and the trees just starting to turn and everything smelled great. Quite a contrast from the harsh, evil smelling city I had just come from. Shanties everywhere, guys with guns, and overwhelming odors of diesel fumes and open sewers. You'd think I'd be happy to be home, but I spent most of the day with a lump in my throat. I missed El Hogar. I missed my team. I had spent 24/7 with them in Honduras for a week, and I kept wondering what they were having for breakfast. Probably not refried frijoles and tortillas, which been our almost constant fare there. Our last day was very hectic - saying goodbye, getting to the Tegucigalpa airport, changing planes and clearing customs in Miami. There were a lot of distractions, which was good, because we all felt the sadness of leaving a very special place. Saturday morning, the boys a program to say goodbye to us. They made us cards and gave us hugs. We played a game where we had to name each other. Several of the boys got all the names right, though "Gauri" gave them fits. Word has it that if you can't name at least five boys, Claudia won't give you your passport back. For this group, it was no problem. We knew almost all the boys' names and their faces still came to me as I walked around Winchester. Gauri wrote a great entry a few days ago on why we go to El Hogar. To that I would only add one thing. These kids have in one way or another been told that they are worthless. Some have literally been told that by their own mother. Others have been abused or abandoned or starved and gotten the message that way. But something wonderful became clear as they said goodbye to us. The fact that we were willing to travel from so far away to be with them has miraculously sent them the message that they are special and loved. They made that clear in a number of ways. And I have to tell you that that knowledge was completely poignant and humbling. To be even a tiny part of redeeming the damage that growing up in a poverty stricken country does makes the entire effort seem obvious. I had always thought I came to this place because it changed me, but it also unquestionably enriches those whose small lives we touch. Not because we are special, but just because the effort tells these boys that they are special. I continue to be amazed by this.... jason 2006-10-09T17:44:57-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002689.html I've decided that there are far too few pictures of the boys in this blog. To look at what I wrote you'd think it was all about the virtues of various building materials. Sheesh. I'll remedy that by keeping my own words to a minimum and letting the boys show you themselves what El Hogar is all about. Kevin and Ricardo negotiate - Pax loses Wish I could still do that . . . . Bugs are the best. Infectious smile! Marlon swears it wasn't him! Helen had a contact lens driven to the back of her head, though. Bill's pal Samuel. Not all fun and games. Peekaboo! (How do you say that in Spanish?) I love laundry day. Mugging for the camera. Evening Assembly before free play - Merdado and Jonathan are getting impatient. Pax needed some height. Beware of Honduran card sharks - never lost so many games of "Go Fish" in my life. Futbol and dodgeball. No kidding, these kids are good! I think Byron may still be juggling that soccer ball. Stuart falls for the oldest trick in the book. Every time we tried to take a team photo, the boys would jump in. We didn't mind.... jason 2006-10-09T16:57:33-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002681.html gauriadelkar 2006-10-09T09:34:34-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002679.html It is with great sadness that I saw our week in Honduras come to an end yesterday. I didn't want to leave or say goodbye, but we had to and we did. I found it very difficult. It is incredible how attached I became, in one short week, to the boys, the staff, El Hogar and Honduras. After spending a week there, I also found it difficult to be back here. Everything seems so symmetrical, orderly and luxurious. I lack the words to express how awesome our journey was! For me, it was eye-opening and life changing. I saw poverty, pride, suffering, humility, strength and hope. I experienced everything from pure joy to deep sadness. I learned a lot about a country and its people. I met truly remarkable human beings. I also got to know the six wonderful MathWorkers I traveled with. As a group, we worked hard and had an incredible amount of fun. We contributed some and received so much more in return. I came back home with slightly stronger biceps, a ton of wonderful memories, the willingness to go back and the certainty that I want to be involved in the El Hogar project. I also came back with renewed gratitude for all that I have and the opportunities that I've been given. One last thought. There are many boys and girls who need help in Honduras and there are many countries like Honduras in this world. In the face of that, it is easy to feel hopeless and to say, "What difference can my contribution make?" For each one of the boys at El Hogar, our contributions make all the difference in the world. El Hogar has transformed and saved their lives and that is priceless.... cgeorgia 2006-10-08T23:19:48-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002678.html Ricardo and I were talking about vacations the other day and he was mentioning how he doesn’t usually like them. The idea of sitting on the beach drinking Margaritas gets old after a couple of hours. After a week, he’s officially stir-crazy. I could sit on the beach for a week no problem, but I took his point. He went on to say that this was one of the most fun vacations he’s had. That took me aback, because I don’t really think of these trips as vacations at all. They are intense, joyous, heartbreaking, frustrating, eye-opening, soul-stirring and yes, sometimes a lot of fun, but not vacations. But he went on to say that working construction at the Technical School was some of the most fun he’s had and I have to agree with him. Sounds weird, but working out in the hot Honduran sun moving sand, gravel and cement, mixing it into concrete and pouring it into forms to make a school is, damn it, a whole lot of fun. I think my favorite part is the human chain we made moving the heavy ingredients to the second floor where they were mixed. Like I said in a previous post, all of this work needs to be done by hand. There are no elevators, conveyors or even a block and tackle. We were armed only with six five gallon buckets. We’d fill them about half-way and move them up, over a plank, and through the framing to the stairway and to the room to be mixed. Here’s how it looked: Stuart fills, Bill and Pablo hand off to Ricardo, who's standing on a plank spanning a sand pile and a landing. Helen takes the bucket. Helen turns and hands to Christina on the landing. Christina hands to Gauri on the steps who brings it to a crew member by a wheelbarrow. The buckets go down the same way aided by gravity and pinpoint precision pitching. The really fun part was after the start-up, we got in to a neat rhythm passing the full buckets up and the empties down. We moved an astonishing amout of stuff. We could move about a metric ton in twenty minutes. Now, when the Hondurans moved it – they would have none of this gringo-style, half-full bucket nonsense. They would fill the thing to the top, hoist it on to a shoulder and manhandle it up the stairs. It was kind of awesome, a lot of these guys looked like they weighed about 150 lbs. soaking wet, but pound for pound were some of the strongest I’ve ever met. I won’t even get into how they never sweat, never even look hot, and only sip water every now and then. Me – I look like I must have jumped in a river about five minutes into the day. The thing was, Don Gustavo, the maestro of the worksite, confessed to Ricardo that our method was much faster. Was he trying to make us poor, silly, computer-bound Americanos feel better? Quite possibly, but I don’t really think so. The rhythm was real and we could almost feel the flow through the group. Of course, our true "butts-behind-computers-all-day" uselessness came back out when the actual concrete mixing began. Nevertheless, mixing concrete is all kinds of messy fun. Once ingredients are assembled, they must be mixed by turning them over with shovels. Then, the center is pulled out until the pile is a ring resembling the caldera of a volcano. The ring holds water and we start shoveling the mixture in so it gradually moistens. Mixing concrete by hand does get you to stop worrying about your usual fashion concerns. The same buckets used to haul the ingredients are now filled with concrete and carried to the forms. The Honduran crew also seemed genuinely sad to see us go. I’ve worked with these guys before and never has a team gotten this kind of reaction when it left. They asked to have pictures taken of the whole group. I’ll spare you the metaphors of the harmony we felt working moving into the space of human relationships, but it certainly did give a special feel to this service project. And finally, lest we get too heavy, I’ll close with a gratuitous “Fear Factor” moment provided by Stuart who really seemed to need to get down quickly.... jason 2006-10-06T22:57:35-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002677.html Today we took the day off and went to visit a tourist town outside Teguz. On the way out of the city we heard this loud roar. It took me a while to figure out what was going on and then looked up to see a 767 flying about 1500 ft. over our heads. This plane was arriving in Teguz and still had its landing gear up. Teguz is in a valley surrounded by intricate range of mountains around it. The land is very irregular with high peaks spurting out and high from the ground. Because of this, when you fly in you are decending and taking steep turns all while at some 2000 to 1500 ft. of altitude. If you like that sort of thing it is truly exhilirating, but if you don´t then arm yourself with some shots of tequila before you take a peak out the window. Turns out only very experienced pilots fly into this city. We are not sure but speculate that the new airport has radar, maybe even an instrument landing strip. If they don´t then there is NO way to fly into this city in a storm or at night. It will be sad to leave tomorrow. I will miss the people I have met here including Don Raul and his wife Doña Claudia and all the boys of course. I am sure they will miss our futbol lessons (yeah right). I guess I will see the city one last time from my window seat tomorrow as we roar 2000 ft off the ground and wind around the city to climb over the mountains.... pax 2006-10-06T22:40:16-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002676.html Today will be our last day for the trip, at El Hogar, before leaving for Bean town tomorrow. Also today, was the team´s day off from work...( although I have started missing working at the construction site ). Raul took us to Valle de angeles, which is about an hour from Tegucigalpa, and is a hub of Hondurian handicrafts, pretty little streets and a must go for shoppers. The drive was scenic with curved roads, going up through the mountains and the weather was just perfect . The shops here have a plethora of handmade hondurian handicrafts, cuban cigars (shhhh...) and coffee. We had a hearty Hondurian meal, in a nice little restaurant and came back to get ready for the pizza party for the boys. Some boys at El Hogar go home on the weekends. Those who stay back are boys who either do not have a family, their house is too small to accomodate them, there is not enough food for everyone or the situation at home is just too unsafe. Yesterday, most boys left because of a staff retreat day, some stayed back and some joined their teachers, at their home. It is surprising to see the effect a place has when kids leave. Since the day we arrived , we´ve got used to see the boys playing, the place is complete, with their presence, their games , their talk and it felt very different to suddenly see most of them gone for the day. Most of them will however come back tonight or tomorrow morning and we are all looking forward to seee them before leaving El Hogar. Some of the boys were sad to leave, others who stayed back were sad because they had no home to go to, like the other kids. Over all the energy levels were down yesterday evening, but Helen, Pax, Christina and I enjoyed a game of soccer and dodge ball with Cezar nevertheless. We will leave tomorrow at around 10:30 in the morning. It has been a great trip...one of the best trips Ive ever been on. Moreso because we came here with a lot of anticipation, and it has been thoroughly satisfying. I have learned from this trip to El Hogar to appreciate what I have more than I have ever done before. I understand more than ever before the significance of my family, the significance of having a normal childhood and the acccess to a good education. I realize how insignificant my hassles are ( I am not going to post to mw. hassles for a loooong time to come ). Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day, leaving the kids and leaving El Hogar. Its sad that some of them wont be here when we leave, but in a way its good because saying good bye is not easy. Well for now....Im want to enjoy every bit of the last night of playing cards with the team.... gauriadelkar 2006-10-06T22:07:57-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002671.html Last night after dinner we came out to play with the boys only to find just a handful of them all watching TV and looking a little down. We learned that because today is the teachers' retreat day, and there are no classes today, the boys that were able to, went home. Just 11 boys remained at El Hogar last night, and I think they were more then a little sad that other boys could go home and they had no place to go. And we felt sad for them too. Some of these boys will not be back at El Hogar until Saturday afternoon or Sunday, meaning that we won't get a chance to say goodbye to them. It will be very sad to leave. Even though the week went by incredibly fast, our arrival here seems like it was ages ago. It is still too early to think of our departure. We have a full day here ahead of us today! Some boys will be back here tonight, and I am preparing for more hide and seek, soccer, tackle, dodge ball and whatever other "contact sports" they can come up with.... hchigiri 2006-10-06T11:08:10-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002670.html Before coming to Honduras I expected to find a similar situation as that of my own country. There is no question Mexico has poverty to a similar degree as that of Honduras, however it seems to me that it is far more prevalent in the Central American country. Most of the city is covered with colonias (neighbourhoods) that are buit from squatting and irregular construction. The government follows the settlements around providing electricity service and that gives birth and name to a new colonia. Mexico excersizes exactly this type of "urban planning" but it tends to happen in the periphery of cities not so much in them. Similarly to the bonds that the MathWorks´ team is building from living and working hard together, poverty and hard work make Hondureños good natured and very friendly. The boys at El Hogar as well as the group of construction workers that we helped through the week are people that I hope I have a chance to work with again. And more importantly, they make me think deeply about what is important and what is not. Two days ago just before lunch at the work site, a few kids from the technical school came around and saw that we might need more people to run our human conveyor belt run more smoothly. I am not sure how old these boys are but they looked like they were 10 or 12 years old and were as stong and hard working as we were. At the break for lunch Jason gave one of the kids some Lempiras to buy some sodas. The kids came back, handed Jason the change and the large bottle of coke they had bought. There was no assumption that the soda was theirs, instead they assumed it was for us. Once Jason explained the soda was for them they joyfully ran off show other kids (and probably share with them). Lunch at the construction site was at noon. We arrived on site at around 10a.m. each morning and worked very hard for two hours. The normal construction crew arrives on site at 7a.m. and are pretty happy to see us. For lunch we would go indoors and have a cooked meal. The crew instead ate outside under a tree. They had some pastries called "Rosquillas" which are like little dognuts about 2.5 inches in diameter. Pablo Enrique a.k.a "la cabeza" held on to a bag of about 20 of these and together with some "salsa" it fed around 12 guys. As soon as I asked what they were, Pablo handed me two of them to try. They were delicious. I was appreciative, ate one and shared the other with the gringo team, then I went inside to eat the cooked meal. People here are not attached to what they have even though they don´t have much. This for me sums up the high quality of human nature we have found here in Tegucigalpa and Amarateca. I will be back to eat Rosquillas under a tree some day.... pax 2006-10-06T10:55:14-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002667.html Today, we got the chance to go the third campus of El Hogar - the Episcopal Agricultural School - referred to as "the Farm". It is situated about 70km north of Tegucigalpa in a really nice, bucolic setting. The first thing we all noticed was the quiet. It was really beautiful and peaceful out there. We realized we had gotten really used to all the noise - mostly traffic noise because Hondureños use horns to express every emotion. The farm was a welcome break from that. The Farm is a very interesting place. There, the rural contingent of El Hogar's boys learn sustainable farming techniques and animal husbandry. In a way, what the agricultural school does is even more important that the other campuses. The graduates from here go back to their respective towns and villages and teach what they learn. They help whole communities with that knowledge. We started looking at the crops. They are irrigating a field for corn. And they are actually having problems with water. A big sugar cane company is diverting water that they have been using to fill their lagoons. Next season, they hope to build a second lagoon so they can store more water, but this year, the crops are thirsty. Nevertheless, we saw some really good looking, smelling and tasting crops. We saw lots of cabbages, tomatoes, corn, papayas, sugar cane, and bananas. Tasting the sugar cane was a treat. Then it was on to the livestock pens. The cattle were just lines up, seemingly waiting for us. Stuart was first to, how shall we say, put his hand in. You can read about that in his entry. Then he convinced Helen to give it a whirl, and she did. Although, she said she would have been better had she not been afraid of hurting the cow. The Farm also hosts work teams and this team was enthusiastic about maybe giving it a try. However, that might mean 5:30am and 3:30pm milkings.... jason 2006-10-05T23:53:56-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002666.html Dr. Barbra McCune is a medical missionary in Honduras. She is a Yale trained doctor who has been working in Honduras going on her fourth year. She lives alone and travels to her clinic, Clinica Medical Episcopal, on transportation she calls a "chicken-bus" every day. She also is a special friend of El Hogar, often taking care of the boys if they need it and going on home visits like the one we went on. She's even been known to help out a sick work team member or two. Though, not this trip, thank goodness! She is an extraordinary woman. She speaks Spanish with a New York accent, and it was fun to hear her talking like the "Coffee Talk" lady on her cell phone to her cab driver. She uses her hands a lot and is an expert in third world health care delivery. We were lucky enough to corral her into a visit last night where she came and talked to us about the challenges of health care in Honduras. I guess it's no surprise that it's not a pretty picture. Barbra's clinic, for example, doesn't have electricity. She actually can't quite figure out why. Somebody pissed off the electric company and now the whole neighborhood is out. For three months now. This means Barbra does her examinations using a headlamp like miners wear. She also has no running water. She has fresh water carried in to a cistern where she can use it. Turns out only 5% of the Hondureños carry health insurance. The rest go to public hospitals where they must pay for diagnostic tests - in advance. So, you've got heart arythmia and chest pains so you go to the hospital and they tell you to go downstairs for an EKG. When you get there they tell you you have to pay half a year's income which you don't have anyway. What do you do? You go home. An interesting thing is that the diagnostic equipment and techniques do exist in Honduras on a par with the US - there are CT Scans, MRI's, etc. But really expensive therapies like organ transplants just don't happen. The group was interested in family planning issues because we had seen so many boys will many siblings and one struggling parent. The news there was grim. The average - that's average - age of first pregnancy has dropped from 16 to 14 in the past two years. That means there's 11 year-old girls out there having babies. The reason for this is not the Catholic church's influence, but a combination of ignorance and cultural issues that prevent women from seeking birth control as to not upset their partners. The AIDS/HIV rate is climbing, as is the incidence of drug resistant tuberculosis. And the other thing to realize is that all the "normal" stuff, diseases that happen everywhere - cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, autism, birth defects, retardation, etc. - also happen here. They are just amplified by the layer of poverty that lays over them. She finished by telling us about being a single, American woman in Honduras. Basically, it's getting worse for her. She told of four separate close calls she's had recently. The most serious being a hold up in a fake cab that dumped her in one of the worst neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa late at night, after having taken her money, cell phone, etc. And, she was lucky. Our group reacted understandably to this talk. We were sad and overwhelmed. We know we can't solve the problem. It's too big. That's a hard pill for us engineer geeks to swallow. All we can hope to do is be a small part of the solution. Not giving up and saying, "I can't solve it, so I'll do nothing" is the important thing. Ally ourselves with people and places like Barbra and El Hogar. There is magic happening in these places and they can make a difference in so many lives. Maybe someday, that will tip the balance the other way.... jason 2006-10-05T23:07:40-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002665.html Today we worked for the last time shifting sand, gravel and cement. Many of us carried bags of cement over our shoulders for about 50 yards and up some stairs. It was the heaviest thing I have ever carried. When the work ended today, I had managed to wear a hole through the new leather work gloves I bought. Even although we could only carry half full buckets of sand and gravel (and the foreman had to make adjustments to his cement receipt calculation as a result) I think we made up for it with speed and efficiency. The workmen were a great bunch of guys and it had been fun to work with them. At lunch time when we left, many of us gave some of our gear (boots and gloves) to the workmen, who appreciated them very much. Many of them wore burst sneakers. One guy who I gave my boots to had most of his toes showing out of his. Pax gave away his work boots and the sneakers he had brought to change into, leaving him with bare feet. After lunch we went to the agrigultural school which was some distance away. We were shown around the many acres of land they have where the students train for most of each morning. There were all sorts of crops, fruit and vegetables. We sampled (chewed) some sugar cane. I tried my hand at milking a cow. First of all, it does seem a rather intimate thing to do to a cow but she did not seem to care in the slightest and kept eating. You need to first grab high up on the teat, ringing it with you thumb and forefinger (perhaps to trap the milk?), then you can squeeze the teat itself. There is also the problem that it doesn't squirt directly down. Each of the four teats seemed to squirt off in its own peculiar direction, missing the bucket entirely. I did manage to get into a short rhythm at one point.... stuartm 2006-10-05T22:01:34-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002664.html The morning song of horns and gears beyond the walls of El Hogar blends with the joyful shouts of newly awaked boys as the sun climbs, headed straight overhead. Pre-school assembly is a circle of neatly dressed boys listening to a pep-talk and then a sermon or hymn. We volunteers, armed with water bottles and dressed for hard labor glide into the morning rush with Raul at the helm. The views starts with (by our standards) run down shops, mostly seeming to deal with automobiles one way or another. The vista turns upscale briefly at the bottom of the valley, Intercontinental Hotel and McDonalds being examples. Soon we begin the climb out of the valley and away from Teguchigalpa, racing against time with every other vehicle for apparently no reason. The houses (and shanties) crawl up the hillsides all around. Water is hauled up in a truck and dumped into private cisterns. As it turns out, waste water travels down hill, making the higher elevations ever more attractive. The mountains are small and steep. The soil seems like hard chalk although knowledgeable people say volcanic. There are pine forests and a scattering of semi-tropical brush and lots of long grass. Our fellow travelers are in Chicken Busses, which are cheap, travel long routes, and are dangerous to ride. Some of the cars and trucks are loaded to the point of tipping. Never mind, up the hill they go. Over the summit into the Ameriteca Valley, the shanties are fewer and industrial establishments dominate. One is Cafe Indo, a major coffee producer. We can inhale the morning shot of caffine as we drive by. Off the paved road we climb to a view point to overlook the Tech School from above. Looks lovely. But, then, to work. In the afternoon all of this is reversed, except the sun is at a different angle. We sleep to the private language of car horns:"Watch out! I'm next! Don´t you Dare! You cheated and here is your earful", and so on.... mckeeman 2006-10-05T21:27:54-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002661.html "Como te llamas?" (What is your name?) is a question we've asked every boy. Most boys tell us their names with great pride. Some boys come up to us, pull on our hand or tap us on the shoulder, and test us, "Como me llamo?" (What is my name?). When we get a boy's name right, his face illuminates like he's been made to feel really special. When we don't remember his name or if we don't get it right, he tells us again, sometimes with disappointment, sometimes without, maybe secretly hoping that we'll get get it right the next time. The boys haven't ask us "Como te llamas?" many times. We were introduced to them once and many boys committed our names to memory immediately. Minor has come up to us a few times and, with the cutest spanish accent, has enumerated our names while counting on his fingers: Yason, Estuart, Helen, Gauri, Christina, Guillermo, Ricardo. "Como te llamas?" is all that is necessary to start a friendship with a boy. The boys come to El Hogar with a name, a personality and a troubled past and they are given love, nurture, food, a place to sleep, security and an education. The seven of us came to El Hogar with a name and a personality. If we came with problems or worries, we soon were able to put them in perspective. I have realized that a lot of my "problems" are really luxurious ones to have. Everything else we have and everything we do back home is irrelevant here. It doesn't matter how much money we make, where we live, what we own, what we do for a living... All the boys want to know is our names. All they want to do is play with us. More than any other experience, this trip has gotten me in touch with what is at the core of every human being. When you strip away material possessions and titles, what are people made of? I have come to realize that I work with extraordinary people and I have gotten to know aspects of my coworkers' personalities that I might not have seen during a regular day at work. I have also gotten a chance to meet really extraordinary people in Honduras: Claudia, Raul, Rosibel, Doña Angela, Dr. McCune, just to name a few. When you look at people who have very little, it becomes so easy to see their strength, their passion, their courage, their perseverence and their pride. And when you look at the boys, you see joy and a huge potential for Honduras' future.... cgeorgia 2006-10-05T11:06:36-05:00 http://www.elhogar.org/MathWorks/archives/002658.html Yesterday, Mierocoles, I was invited by Señora Claudia to stay behind as the work crew left for the brick piles and fresh concrete of the Technical School. My task was to sit in on classes to learn something of the tempo of the teaching. And, a private kindness, get a better chance to work on my español. My first assignment was with Señor Hezar, the math teacher. The boys, 6-7th grade, were reviewing some algebra. The problems involved exponents, multiplication and addition. I will give an example -3xa-2 + 2xa-2 for which they had to get the expected -xa-2 and then had to explain the sign, the disappearance of ¨1¨ from the result. The work was done one formula at a time, at the whiteboard. After the selected student had done his best, the whole class participated in a critique, chanting the rules of simplification in chorus. Each exercise finished with applause as the boy returned to his seat. The boys stayed completely involved. Later, with the youngest students, we did simple sums and word problems. Some of them counted on their fingers. Others placed and erased little marks on the whiteboard. The word problems had to be answered with words also. It was amazing to me to see these very young children intently figuring out carries and borrows. I then took a break to make a mathematical puzzle (see the MATLAB Soma demo) for Hezar. Don Julio, who should have retired years ago, helped me find wood and saws and glue, and then stuck his fingers into the work at just the right time. It was great fun working with him even though he has no English and my Spanish is primitive, to say the least. I finally collapsed for a 2 hour nap, then joined the English class. The teacher, Jose, has not been out of Honduras but speaks very well. He corrected my syntax at one point. The final exercise consisted of clearing the floor and laying out an elaborate town of streets and buildings. Jose would pick a student, give marching instructions in English, then ask the student ¨where is the bank?¨ The answer was something like between the park and the post office. The kids spoke English even to answer roll call. By this time the dusty crew was back and the evening activities, eating and games, commenced. Then most of us ended up in the very complete computer room, downloading pictures, blogging, emailing, and the like.... mckeeman 2006-10-05T09:15:28-05:00