Finally ... it's coming together

Today I went to Palmares. I was at the bus station at 7:45 AM. I don't even go to work that early! At the station I met another volunteer, Alex, who has been here since mid July. She is 26 years old and lives in Nashville. Thank God for having her here. I don't know how I would have found the hogarcita or understood what to do or not to do without her. None of the tias (caregivers) speak English and I certainly do not have enough words to understand any complicated (or simple) instructions. They don't allow any pictures of the children but I do have one photo from outside.

So the bus took muy longer than I was told: almost one hour each way. The walk from the bus to the hogarcito would have been over 30 minutes. Alex had aready told me it was a difficult walk and she herself had been taking a taxi from the bus stop there and back. We agreed to split the cost. Money well spent.

Mostly we played with the eight boys and girls there. Two are being adopted this week by an Italian family. They were so happy to know they have a forever home. They do love to color so we did a lot of that. I didn't take any of the toys etc. I brought with me today. I wanted to see how it was and how many children were there. Tomorrow I will bring surprises for them. They were so happy to see us and wanted to have our attention. They were truly sweet. Several of the boys worked on a puzzle Alex had brought them yesterday. It only had 24 pieces but each boy was so pleased to complete it. BTW it was not as easy as you may think because the pieces were holograms from the Cars movie. We played until liunch time (about 11:15) then we took a taxi back to central Palmares. Alex showed me a beautiful church there by the square.

Alex took me to a wonderful bakery where we bought some lunch. We still had time to look around a bit before the return trip. It is much harder to take a bus up the hill than down the hill but we finally made it back to Atenas. More later....time for bed....