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.