Jovenes en Camino- Summer Internship 2013: Bienvenidos a Honduras!!

We are here!! I left Nashville at 6:30 on Monday morning, connected in at Atlanta for a flight at 9:55 to Tegucigalpa, the capitol of Honduras. My first flight was delayed because of cloud cover in ATL, but that did not mess up the schedule. In ATL, I met up with Jenn Scanlon, one of the other interns from Connecticut who goes to LU, and we flew to Tegucigalpa together. It took us 30 minutes to get through customs. One of my bags was left in ATL, but I will have it on Wednesday. No problema! We were only in the airport for 45 minutes or so, but it started pouring outside, and did not stop until 6:30 that night. Jenn and I met up with Kendal (one of the other interns), Emily Davidson (Steve Davidson's daughter), and Annie Brown (the American that works at JEC full time).

The first thing we did was go to the mall to eat lunch, buy phones for the summer, and go to Walmart, which was attached to the mall. We then began our drive to Jovenes en Camino. It was about a 45 minute drive. The roads were not horrible until about 3 miles from the home. Then the road was dirt and covered in pot holes! The area Jovenes is in is beautiful. We are surrounded by mountains.

We were introduced to all of the boys and staff. En La Casa Amarilla (yellow house, the youngest boys), all gave us hugs. Everyone was very welcoming and excited that there were new gringos. Although we spent a lot of time with them on Monday, we went to bed super early. All of the interns got 12 hours of sleep, which was pretty awesome considering we all got up at 3:30 that morning. I called my parents right before bed. As I was sitting on my bed talking, something crawled out from under it. After seeing it and it disappearing, I got a little freaked out. I went to get the dorm dad (they refer to them as aunt and uncle at JEC). I found out that it was a murcielago (a bat). The dorm dad had a broom, smashed it, then stood on it for a good while. All of the boys in my house (casa rosada, pink house) were, of course, interested. I slept better knowing there was not a bat under my bed..

In the morning (Tuesday), we had our intern orientation at 9 o'clock. There are not many people at the home in the mornings. Most of the boys are in school all morning, but come home around 12. The older boys work in the morning on projects at the home or on the farm that JEC owns right down the road. We went to go see the farm Tuesday morning. I'll do a post only on the farm soon. JEC is very self sufficient.

Six of the boys at JEC go to a bilingual school down the road that is a part of the major Agriculture university in Zamorano. It is called Allison Bixby. They get out of school at 2, so Annie takes them lunch every day. (That is a weird quirk about Honduran culture. They do not pack lunches for their kids. They take them a fresh meal at lunch time every day. For the boys who don't have someone to do that, they can pay a woman in Zamorano to bring them food every day.) Annie takes the JEC boys lunch and eats hers while she waits for them to finish so she can take the containers back. Jenn and I ate with Annie under a pavilion at the school. We are constantly learning in every conversation. There are always new things to be thinking about, whether language, culture, stories of people, etc. I loved having lunch there. It was beautiful outside and the breeze was great.

We came back and the public school boys had returned from school and eaten lunch. It is part of our job to help the boys with their homework. Luckily, I just had to do simple addition (something with limited needed vocab). Then, we played soccer and talked for a while.

I ate dinner with the green house, the older boys. The house parents there are very slow and intentional with speaking spanish to us. It is very encouraging. Dinner was an egg, red beans, queso fresco, and tortillas. Maybe I was just hungry, but it was great! That is very typical for dinner since it is the smallest meal of the day.

After dinner, Annie and I surprised Jenn for her birthday with cookies and Coke. We shared them with all of the boys. It is funny how much you do not think about how we sing "Happy Birthday" until you are in a place where no one does it.

We watched the first part of Nacho Libre with the boys in the green house before they went to bed at 9. They loved it! All of us were laughing so much.

This morning (Wednesday) was very chill before the first group came at 10:30. They brought Little Caesars and cokes. They got here an hour and a half before the boys got back from school, so they got a tour and we all talked to them a lot. **JEC is really pushing for people to get their name out there, so if you ever want to help, you should share their website on FB. It is www.jovenesencamino.org**

The group played soccer and other games with them and handed out small toys. The interns helped Annie sell JEC souvenirs.

I went to help some of the boys from the bilingual school do their reading for the day so I could sign off on it for them. The boys in the green house got a new 32" tv from a donor! They were sooo pumped. I finally got time and internet to update my blog. I will try to be more intentional about posting!!

My time here has already been a blessing and it has only been three days. More to come from JEC! God is absolutely at work in this place!