Holidays on Rancho Santa Fe

From December 23 through January 2 all volunteers are committed to remain on the ranch and spend Christmas and New Years with the kids. All the employees, tios y tias are on vacation, so we volunteers, as well as ano familiares (high school and university pequenos doing a year of service on the ranch) work as tios and tias in our hogares.

While Christmas season was being celebrated at home, I just didn’t really feel the “Christmas spirit” here in Honduras. Something about summer weather, palm trees, and ghetto Christmas decorations in the city just don’t match up with my vision of Christmas in Michigan and Chicago. However, I had an amazing time being with my girls. We had a lot of time to hang out, bond, and connect. I did turno/sleeping in hogar three times, on my own, which was really nice.
There was a lot of down time on the ranch during these few weeks, so I taught my girls how to play Blackjack. If anyone knows my family at home, my parents are big gamblers. My parents frequent casinos, read (and even write) books on gambling, and on holidays at our house we usually end the night playing cards at the dining room table. So, this was a fun family game/tradition that I was happy to share with my hogar. I bought a bag of 1,000 dulces/candies for the girls to use as their bets. My dad forwarded me his strategy sheet that he created so that I could “teach them properly”. We spent (and still do) days and nights playing blackjack and listening to my iPod, which was a Christmas gift from my parents. They are really into it. It is so much fun!

During the evenings, the volunteers in Casa Personal were able to loosen up a bit as well. We would stay up late, party, and have iPod contests (each of us with iPods takes turns playing songs). It was a really fun time for all of us. We really had fun making connections and getting to know each other in a different way. Monica, Vanessa, Annemarie, and Kris are probably the girls I am closest to on the ranch. We have fun.
Holidays on the ranch are often times when ex-volunteers come back to visit. And this year was no exception. Casa Personal was full of current and ex-volunteers. Hilary, the speech-language pathologist whom I replaced in August, came back, as well as Carrie Slaymaker. Carrie is also an SLP who works for Bilingual Therapies, my company in Chicago. She is one of the ones who told me about NPH and prepped me on all I needed to know before my arrival. So, it was really nice to see her and share stories.

Jesus, our director from Chicago, also had some visitors come to the ranch -- Cesar and Julio from Chicago, and Oscar from Mexico. We had tons of fun hanging out with them. They’d stop by Casa Personal every night, we partied on New Year’s Eve, and even met up with them at the Lago de Yajoa. Cesar and Julio are definitely guys I would love to meet up with again when I return home (in Chicago).