Day two of work

Good morning, this is Irene again. It seems that I am up with the roosters (and I do mean that literally) so am able to write a note early in the morning before anyone else is stirring. By the way, the roosters here start about midnight or 1am. I can use ually ignore them until at least 4:30 or so.

Yesterday we were in Santa Marta for the first time to start our work. We always start with a meeting with the community leaders on our first day in a community. Introductions are done, we are formally welcomed there, then we introduce ourselves and talk about our work with them for the week. After that we did a bit of a community assessment and visited individual homes to learn more about their lives. We also worked on getting everything set up to begin our health and literacy assessments today. We played with the children and visited with the community members for awhile. Then we made the short trek to Santa Celia to check in and say hi to our friends there. We also dropped off a full suitcase of yarn, which they were so excited to see because they have been crocheting like crazy since we left and it is almost gone! Thanks to the amazing generosity of our friends back home we still have lots of yarn to take out there later this week. Some of the women showed us the things they have been making and they are beautiful! One of the women very proudly showed a lovely small blanket to Nikki and then gave it to her as a gift for teaching her how to do it.It was a very sweet moment. Nikki has class set up for 10am on Thursday and the women are spreading the word.

We sent Paul and Karen off to Managua yesterday to meet Mark and Judy and do the hand off. Paul and Karen are taking some much needed time to enjoy themselves this week and rest and recuperate. Mark and Judy arrived safe and well and immediately went into assessment mode getting all of the technology ready and training everyone for the tasks today. We also spent a lot of time emptying suitcases, sorting and organizing supplies and re-packing them and getting the vehicles loades so we could head out right after our early morning breakfast. A very busy evening for all of the team members.

It's time to head out shortly, so I shall sign out for now. Thanks for follwing us on this journey.

peace,

Irene