Orientacion

Rest time is over. We began our two week orientation on Monday, and boy am I sore from all the walking! The ranch is much bigger than I imagined -- it’s over 500 acres. Our first day of orientation all the new volunteers met on the rooftop of the Casa Personal (volunteer house) to introduce ourselves. Then our day was full of tours and walking. We toured the main office and internet café. We had a long meeting with the social work department to learn about the process by which the pequenos arrive on the ranch.
Lunch: liver, rice, cabbage salad, tortillas -- I didn’t know it was liver at first, I did not like it!
We toured all the hogares (pequenos homes).
For the first two weeks we new volunteers will be spending one evening with each hogar that will be available when the old volunteers leave. After the two weeks, we will list our top three hogares and Jen, the volunteer coordinator, will assign us to an hogar. Our responsibilities in the hogares include: spending every week night in the hogar eating dinner with the pequenos, helping them with homework, reading books, playing games, and placticando (conversing). We are with them every week night from 6-8 PM. Every other weekend we spend the entire day (Saturday) helping them with chores, participating in ranch activities (e.g., last Saturday they pequenos went on a walk to Tamalequeso to play), etc.
My first night I spent at Disipulos de Jesus. This is an hogar of 18 boys ages 13-15-years-old.
Dinner: rice, beans, huajara (like cottage cheese, but in big chunks)
The boys were really entertaining. They tried to trick me by saying that they were a brother of one of the Olimpia soccer players (one of Honduras' professional soccer teams -- the other is called Montagua). We hung out reading the newspaper, they told me about their talleres (workshops), and we shared stories. It was really fun.
Afterwards, there was a "fireside chat" in Casa Personal with all the old and new volunteers. We went around the circle and old volunteers shared a story and a piece of advice to us newbies. It was pretty special.

** My mom asked about the Spanish here. I've been able to understand pretty much everything. Everyone here is pretty impressed with my Spanish abilities, as some volunteers arrive not knowing any Spanish. I'm learning Hondurenen words such as:
lelo - dumb, stupid
chegue - alrighty
Some say that some Hondurans drop the /s/ off the end of words (e.g., "ma o meno" instead of "mas o menos"). I haven't noticed that too much, everyone's been pretty intelligible. However, the kids are another story. Some of them are harder to understand, they jumble all their words together.