Today was a great day!  It's 8pm and were all sitting around recounting the day and laughing and sharing some great moments from the past 15 hours.

We woke up at 5:45 this morning, ate breakfast and then headed to the school assembly.  The kids were so excited to have us there and groups of kids would look at us and pat their seats for us to come sit next to them.  They all gave us hugs and big smiles and were happy to play with us while we waited for the assembly to begin.

The assembly was an hour and a half long and complete with an enthusiastic singing of the Honduran national anthem, a slideshow about  before and after conditions of the students at El Hogar and class President speeches from three student candidates.  One student, a sweet 12 year old girl named Diana was particularly poised and confident.

After the assembly, we broke into two groups - Neal, Mary, Betsy and Nancy worked as teachers aides to some of the students who needed extra attention.  Neal and Betsy had a challenging few hours working on getting two students to count to six in Spanish.

Chief, Gill and I are working to build a playground for the El Hogar school.  We worked hard all day cutting, sanding and routing the wood.  Chief was a machine with the router and will share pictures of the two of us covered in sawdust soon.  Tomorrow we start the assembly.  Wish us luck!

Before dinner, we met with Claudia, the director of the school.  She is a passionate and inspiring woman who deeply loves her job and the kids at El Hogar.  She shared with us the stories of a lot of the children.  It's amazing the resilience that these kids have given their awful circumstances coming into El Hogar.  The meeting began late because the mother of one of the students, an 11 year old boy named Jefferson showed up unannounced at the gates of the school after being estranged from her son for seven years.  Jefferson had been given over to his grandparents by his mother at age four and was abused by both of them.  The grandmother dropped off Jefferson at the gates a few months later and no one has been in contact since.   Tomorrow Claudia is going to court to try to keep Jefferson at school, she is confident she can, but is afraid of the alternative.  Most kids have similar stories of abuse and neglect and their resilience and ability to be positive and happy amidst their adversity is a true testament to this program.

After dinner, we split off again and four of us played with a group of 40 of the younger boys which was apparently pretty chaotic.  The rest of us taught "english class" to a group of 5-6 kids who wanted to practice their english.  They all told us their favorite animal, color and what they wanted to be when they grow up.  It quickly turned into slapping games and thumb war contests with groups of kids laughing and jockeying for our attention.

Tomorrow we start all over again.  Can't wait.

Ethan