Happenings in January

New Years came and went with more dancing, eating and fireworks. The fireworks highlight being the tradition of stuffing homemade scarecrow like dummies with fireworks and setting them on fire in the street at midnight. Burning the "old year" to welcome the new one.

The weekend after New Years, Mike, Jean and I took a vacation weekend and drove up to Trujillo, on the north coast. We camped out the first night on the beach and stayed at the Casa Kiwi the second night. Jean and Mike had a great weekend, enjoying the beach and kayaking among dolphins. I, unfortunately, spent most of the weekend in the tent, starting my fight with dengue fever.

And so, the next week was spent in bed, sleeping off dengue. My roommates took great care of me and I made it through with only one pathetic phone call home to mom.

There is always a lot happening in the Comedor and we started off the New Year by adding 6 more kids! We took in 1 new family and several younger siblings of the kids already in Comedor. Our total was up to 18, but then a family moved, dropping us back down to 16 officially. Orlis and Duglis (the kids who moved) only went to the next town and occasionally come back for lunch. We're all hoping the move is a good one for them. With that drop, we added one more into the program so we officially are feeding 17 kids daily. Unofficially, a few more. We've had great volunteers from the church youth groups coming in to play with the kids and have recently started selling Comedor Infantil Pasionista t-shirts to raise funds. Donations keep coming in and although there are always kinks to work out, we're happy with the progress at Comedor.

Mid January brought Daniel!! His flight into Honduras was delayed which gave Pati and I, along with our friends, Juan Carlos and Canales, a free day in the city to enjoy the musuem of National History. We picked up Daniel the next day for a week in Talanga. It was great to spend the week with him and to have someone from home see what things are all about here. We went to Comedor, had baseball practice, spent an afternoon in Valle de Angeles (a tourist town), went to Casa Pasionista and the domestic violence group. We went to the circus, not once, but twice. First with my roommates and then took 7 of the neighborhood kids and their mom to celebrate a birthday. He even came out as champion of the Martin Luther King Jr Smoothie Off that was held in the gringo house during his stay. Everyone loved him and is still asking about him.

We celebrated Dia de la Mujer (Women's Day) with the women and kids in our domestic violence group. We celebrated as always with music, cake and pinatas that the women had made the week before. Pati, Jean and I meet with these women every week and it is full of incredible women... we loved having the opportunity to celebrate them!

One weekend in January was spent in Lago de Yajoa for our winter retreat. Our boss, Amy, planned a great retreat for us, with plenty of free time for taking in the scenary at the lake and catching up on sleep. It was great to spend the weekend together outside of work and the kayaking at sunrise was particularly awesome.

Huge news among the roommates is that Carolina got accepted into Med School... just happens that her last name is Payne... so we've all been excited for the future Dr. Payne!

This first week of February has been focused on Miguel, whether he likes it or not. Monday was his birthday and we celebrated at Comedor, as well as at a few homes of friends and family of his. Friday, Mike leaves us for the States, as he has been here a year longer than the rest of us and his time with PVI is up. We are all sad to see him go but are enjoying our last week together and happy to have had him with us for the first half of our year.