Lunes/Monday

Now that my schedule is becoming a bit more fijo/fixed, I can let you all in on my daily routines. :) I usually wake up around 6:15 am, get dressed, have breakfast (not ranch food...I've now invested in a granola/oatmeal/corn flakes mixture with a piece of fruit chopped up in it with leche de polvo/powdered milk, which you have to add water to), and head off to the clinica interna/internal clinic. There I do oral motor exercises and feeding therapy with a 13-year-old boy named Ariel. He is not from the ranch, but his family lives nearby. In February he was in a car accident, of which he was the only survivor. He suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and extensive damage of his left leg (his pueblo/town raised the money so he could have surgery, but the doctors messed up the operation...leaving his leg permanently damaged). His mother has been staying with him and my goals are to teach her exercises that she can do with him when they leave the ranch. There is a picture of him before the accident hanging in the room; it is so sad to see the difference. Afterwards, I walk down to the school and have therapy with the "especiales"/special ed kids. Carlos, who is a product of incest, and Pablo, who is labeled as autistic, but who really knows?! They are 20 and 18-years-old, respectively, so therapy is more pragmatic-based. After therapy is recreo/recess, where all of the therapists are assigned to an "especial" to take care of. We march down to the special ed. classroom, pick up our kid and head to the courtyard where merienda/snack is served (usually sandia/watermelon, minimo/banana, manzana/apple, or a naranja/orange --which are actually green in Honduras). Then it's back to the therapy room. I should mention that my therapy room is awesome. Fellow SLP's know that we are not always privileged to our own classroom; we're usually stuck in a storage closet, the hallway, or share a room with many other people. Julia (the SLP from Austria) and I share a large classroom, which is full of great therapy materials (the majority donated from Bilingual Therapies!); however, we've arranged our schedules so that we're rarely there at the same time. After recreo I work with 3 school-age children (all individually). Mostly articulation, vocabulary building, and narrative activities. School is let out at 1:00 pm. I meet up with the special education teacher, Yolanda, as we are in charge of repartiendo/serving lunch to the psicopedagogia/special education department. Food is dropped off in thermos' by a pick-up truck that we have to carry to the school from the road. We serve the food, eat lunch together, clean the thermos', and return them to the curb to be picked up later. Then I head to Casa Eva, which is the home for the abuelos/granparents. I do cognitive therapy with two of the abuelos there. Then I have to quick pack my bag, take a shower if I have time, and head to the employee bus at 4:00 pm, where I meet up with Jean (physical therapist from New York). We take the bus into Tegucigalpa and spend the night in Casa Alistar, a bachillerato/high school hogar/home for about 7 boys. It's nice to be able to go out for dinner, meet up with fellow ranch people, catch a movie, have a few drinks, etc. Monday is definitely a jam-packed day, but it's fun!