The Ranch

Hi everyone! I´ve been here at the Ranch -which is what they call the orphanage, because it´s on a big campus of sorts- for a little over a week now, and I´m beginning to adjust to the life here! My goal is to keep these blog posts short, so let´s see if I can describe life here in a few sentences. A ver...

The ranch is pretty rural, about 45 minutes from Tegus -the nickname for Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras and nearby big city- and most of the buildings are about a 15-20 minute walk from the road. It´s gorgeous, with tree-covered mountains surrounding everything, and lots and lots of trees and nature; and, of course, that nature also includes lots of humoungous grasshoppers and spiders, as well as your usual flies, mosquitos, ants, roaches, etc. There are a bunch of buildings: houses for the kids (there´s a big plaza for the girls, one for the boys, and one for the littlest kids), a big kitchen, soccer fields and basketball courts, the volunteer house, and a lot more. There´s a school for K-6, and then a separate colegio (middle school) for grades 7-9, which is where I´ll be teaching.

The orientation routine has consisted of getting up around 6:30, with the workday starting by 7:20 here- for orientation, we go to shadow people at different jobs, or just have various talks, tours, etc all day. There´s a break from 4-6, and then we go to hogares (homes) from 6-8. Hogares are where the pequeños all live, and every volunteer is assigned one to hang out with from 6-8 every day, to eat dinner with them, help them with the homework, play around (lots of that), etc. The kids all live with 2 or 3 tíos or tías as well (literally, uncles and aunts, but in this case caregivers) who are in charge of them- thus, we just go to hang out, but the tíos have the rough job of being parents to 25 kids.

I´ve had lots of interesting experiences in hogar already, everything from holding a kid upside down while he recited the 3rd stanza of the Honduran National Anthem, to trying to help a girl who didn´t want to do her math homework, to encouraging a group of young teens to chop grass using machetes.

Ok, that´s more than enough description for now! Sorry for letting it get so long. I´ll try to explain things in readable-length installments, but with feeling like I´m taking in more than I know what to do with every day here, it´s hard to keep my descriptions contained.

A todos te extaño mucho!