My Crazy, Movie-esque Life Lately

First off I have been very blessed to have help from one of my very best friends, Sarah Catherine Thetford, and her boyfriend, Richy, here at Jovenes the past month and a half. I know this picture is far away, but we were more concerned about getting as much of the scenery in the picture than us being close to the camera.

Scat, Richy, and myself have been working ourselves like dogs the past few weeks, but it may be better to just say “working a normal day” that the employees here work day-to-day. It’s consisted of 2 weeks of waking up everyday at 4:30AM and doing the following:

4:30- wake up, get ourselves ready

5:00- wake up the boys, get them showered, teeth brushed, dressed, beds made, and hair gelled

6:00-taking all 18 boys to breakfast

6:15- getting the juice boxes filled, snacks in lunchbox deal

6:30- all boys (except 6) on the bus and ready to leave for school with backpacks/lunchboxes

7:00- one of the 3 of us take the 6 boys who attend bilingual school to their campus to drop them off

7:30/8:00- start cleaning (sigh)

8-10:30- CLEAN: sweeping everything, mopping everything, washing pee-stained bed sheets & PJs, & cleaning pee smelling bathrooms (the worst job I’ve ever had)

11:30- eat lunch with the high schoolers & prepare bilingual school lunches to take to campus

12:00- take lunches & deliver to Alison Bilingual school

12:20-12:40- their lunch... we wait until they finish, pick up dishes, and head home

12:30- boys from public school arrive, change clothes, wash hands, and eat lunch

1:00- play time

2:00- public school homework sessions

2:30- head to Alison to pick up 6 boys at bilingual school

3:00- return home, change their clothes, continue washing clothes

4:30-5:30- Alison boys' homework session

5:30- heat up/prepare dinner

6:00- serve dinner to yellow house boys

6:30-8 - the boys play and finish HW if they hadn't already finished earlier in the day

8:00- bed time

8:30- I die.

All of this day-to-day routine doesn’t include soccer games, after-school activities, or anything else that usually pops up last minute. We had Lindy here for the first week of this, and the second week it was just us 3. While at the end of everyday I laid my head down on my pillow counting the hours until I had to wake up to repeat the day again, I remembered the fact that these employees are here day in and day out and probably not getting paid nearly enough. This also goes without mentioning the families these employees have waiting on them to return each night. I seriously don’t know how they do it. These workers here are truly SERVANTS. They’re saints. I don’t know how they do it. All I can say is thank God for their presence here in JEC- it does not go unnoticed.

On a lighter note - I went to cross the border yesterday to renew my permission to be in the country. Of course we waited for the last day possible (it expired yesterday, the 23rd) which made me super nervous. Luckily - everyone here is usually super lax about all this stuff, so I just paid a heavy $3 and didn’t even have to pass the border. Elvin, the house parent in the yellow house, drove me in his tiny truck, and two of my best buds from my green house, Julio and Ochoa, went with us. Since we saved so much time by not crossing into Nicaragua, we treated ourselves to a delicious, sit-down meal in Danli, a city which is close to the border.

This is a picture of Kevin, who just turned 18 this past week. He has decided to go back to living with his father, who lives in a poor area about 8 hours from Teguc. While some of these kids have parents, the parents have chosen to give them up or simply cannot afford taking care of them. Kevin is a case of the later. Since he is now 18, he is not bound to be here, and he has chosen to go look for work and live with his father to help support his family. I wish him all the luck in the world. Kevin gave me a spiral notebook of love poems a few weeks ago and told me he would miss me. The poems were all hand written by his truly. Quite the gesture. Hope you are all well in TN or wherever you are - I can officially announce my arrival date is December 13th. Can’t wait to see you all over the holidays. You have been missed.

I love my job

This week was by far the hardest I've worked at a job in a long time. When people come to JEC, they see the happy faces, smiles, and picturesque moments. Unfortunately this is not real life. These boys are in fact, growing boys, and are mischievous, rough, and sometimes just plain mean. This doesn't make me love them any less, but this week I had the chance to see what life is truly like here 100%.

We were filling in for the house parents from the yellow house, Elvin and Mary. Elvin's sister had a baby, so they headed to the southern part of the country to spend a few days with family. The picture above is of Elvin, Mary, Scat, Richy, Lindy, and myself. This substitution included waking up every day at 4:30 in the morning to wake the boys up, make sure they were showered, dressed, brushing teeth, gel-ing their hair (when in Honduras), and ready to go eat breakfast by 6AM. This also included packing a snack for each of the 19 boys, washing all their dishes, clothes, and cleaning the entire house from top to bottom every day. I can now mop and clean bathrooms like a pro. It's pretty disgusting since they're a bunch of little boys. Naturally several of them pee the beds at night, so we have to deal with washing those sheets as well. After we took the boys to school each day, that's when we cleaned. After cleaning we usually had about an hour to rest before I had to take lunch to the boys at Alison. I have to pack their lunches in the kitchen and then carry it to the school. After they finish I take their dirty dishes home, wash them, and get them ready for the next day.

This picture was taken at 5AM one morning... each day at least we get a beautiful sunrise/sunset. After lunch we work on homework and more laundry for the boys who attend the public school - because they get back every day around 12:30. This is play/rest time. I usually try to clean my room/shower until I have to go back to Alison (private, bilingual school) to pick the boys up at 2:30. At 3 we come home, change their clothes, and start homework. One of my jobs here is to work every day with the Alison boys. I'm in charge of their homework and making sure they complete it/study. There's 6 in all - 4 in 2nd grade, 1 in first grade, and 1 in 5th grade. They're also all on completely different skill levels. After homework is done, we helped prepare dinner to serve at 6PM. The boys sing a song, pray, and then we serve their food. While they're eating it is a good time to prepare our dinner, since after dinner the boys just watch TV for about an hour/hour & half before bed at 8PM. At 8PM we turn off the TV, and the boys get ready for bed. Sometimes this is an easy task, sometimes its extremely difficult. As much as I love the little boogers, we had to play the "bad guys" this week a few times in order to make them actually do what we wanted. This is a picture of all the little guys and us yesterday

Thank God the house parents came back yesterday, so today I got to sleep in until 6:45 instead of 4:30. Today Lindy is heading back home, and I'm so sad. She's one of my very best friends, and she will be very missed. Got to get ready to head to the airport now. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Happy Sunday.

We're spending the afternoon fishing, swimming, and playing with our guest - Lindy! Lindy, better known here as "Wendy", is here for the week, and I'm SO EXCITED.

This is Wendy and myself a few years back in Nashville. Hope you all had a great weekend!

jimmy fallon's weekend update

Here's my weekend update. So much happened in only a few days.

Friday- it was time to go shopping for all the food again. Twice a month - usually in the middle of the month and the last friday of the month - we head to Teguc bright and early to buy food and cleaning supplies for JEC. Now usually we have two separate Fridays to buy the food and cleaning things, but this Friday we had to buy it all on the same day. This includes food to make 3 meals a day for around 80 people every meal. Needless to say, we end up buying like 65 lbs of onions, 25 huge heads of lettuce, etc. This week we had to buy soooo much stuff, including all toiletries for boys (shampoo, soap, deodorant, etc) and cleaning supplies for all three houses and the kitchen (laundry detergent, soap to wash dishes, chlorox, etc). Since Tegucigalpa is around an hour away (maybe less if Israel is driving... yikes) we also had several other errands which had to be accomplished on Friday as well. We had to visit the lawyer twice, another clinic we partner with 3 times, and since it was the end of the month, like three different banks. Unfortunately we did not finish until around 4:30, which means we were "shopping" for a good 10 hours. I was dropped off at Mirador on the way back to JEC, which is the little colony/"subdivision" where I stay every weekend with Junior and Mariana's family.

Saturday morning I had made a deal with Junior, the son of the Ochoa family, to both get our hair cut. His was leaning towards a rat tale (too long mohawk=rat tale), and mine hadn’t been cut in over 4 months... maybe more. I am really particular about who I let cut my hair, even in the states I’ve only let one of my best friends, Chelsea, cut my hair for the past 2 or 3 years. I don’t remember the last time I went to a salon and paid for a haircut. Alicia, the mom, went to beauty school here in Honduras. Not sure how much that qualifies her, but she said she had friends who now had their own salons. We went to her best friends’ salon, and I sat in the black chair ready to face my fate.

I got lucky and Carmen, the hairdresser, had just finished cutting her daughter’s hair, which looked a lot like what I wanted - long layers, but emphasis on the LONG. I love my long hair, and it’s been my trademark for awhile now, so I didn’t want that to end. Unfortunately she cut off more than I would like, but I am trying not to take it too seriously. After all it’s just hair, and the haircut cost me a whopping five dollars total. I can’t even buy shampoo for $5 anymore? After my haircut we went to eat lunch at a local family-operated restaurant, and I had a delicious meal.

Sunday- Around lunchtime Sunday, I had the great pleasure of picking up my very best friend and her boyfriend, Richy, at the bus station here in Honduras! They headed around the bend from Costa Rica, spent a night in Nicaragua, and showed up Sunday around 1:30. I was tickled fancy to spend the afternoon with them and help them get settled here at JEC.

Today and yesterday have been extremely hectic here. One of our administrators has chicken pox (no, she’s not a child), and the other is about to take a 2 week vacation to the states! Therefore I won’t be blessed with much free time for the next few weeks.

I've become quite accustomed to taking my own picture these days since 6 year olds would end up taking a picture of my foot instead of my new haircut. Thanks to Steve Jobs for creating Mac computers to do such marvelous things. RIP.