La Montaña

So far, I will be working at La Montaña, the second phase for the kids. Right now the kids are on school vacation until February, so there is a lot of free time where we are just playing with them. The kids seem to be really patient with how frustrating the language problem is. But the other day, one of the kids got mad at me and said "Understand my language!" And I really wanted to say to him- You're right, I should know your language, but now I am here and this is just the way it is going to have to be. So I really am trying. Laura, Faith and I have Spanish time at home and try to tell one thing from the day in Spanish. A two minute story takes us maybe 15 minutes to get through... sooooo painful!!

On Friday at La Montaña, a group came to talk to the older kids about HIV/AIDS. They were really good, with a lot of interactive little games... like freshmen orientation icebreaker things. They did a skit about what HIV does to your body, and how it handles other infections then. It was really good. Laura and I were sitting in on it and participating in some of their activities. But then the organizer asked for volunteers to demonstrate how to correctly put on a condom. And Laura says that she didn't know what they were asking for, but she volunteered and went right up to the front. The man handed out condoms and then brought out this wooden, varnished penis. So I am sitting in the back of the room watching Laura look so cool and calm...and trying so hard not to laugh out loud. Because the kids were generally very serious and dead silent. (Like as young as 11, and they were very serious about it... I don't know how that would go with 11 year old US kids). Anyway, Laura took her turn putting the condom on the wooden penis and was very cool about it. Then we ate "Felicidades!" cake with the kids.

The whole experience seemed so ridiculous at the time, like how did we get to into this. But thinking about it, it's sad that there's such a need to do presentations like that. The group showed statistics about Honduras...the county in Central America with the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS. It's so great though, that they do come in to talk to the kids about it though. It was a very honest, very realistic presentation about it. But so strange, that a half hour before that presentation I was helping one of those kids with his really basic math that he couldn't understand. Such an irony.