kids! eat your tor-tillas

Everyone is getting sick around here! Ah! Thank god I am not sick. I went to my placement today and was extremely bored. It was slightly painful. Sonia, a lady that works for CCS came and saved the day for me though. She came at about 11 and walked me around showing me different activities that I should do with the patients using the materials that CCS supplies. Tomorrow I plan on painting some nails, playing dominos and coloring. I'm going to change the day to day life of these people because they spend the majority of the day sitting alone all day. It's so sad. Sonia suggested that I have a day where I take them all to the church inside of the hospital because they love it. I am happy to know I am allowed to do these things. I'm almost mad for not thinking of these things myself but I am still trying to adapt to this new place and feel out how the staff is dealing with an american volunteer.

After volunteering, Olivia and I went to drop off our laundry, go to the pharmacy and ATM. We had a cooking class where we made chicharones inside of tortillas. Olivia and Erin made queso inside of them because they don't eat pork but that didn't matter because they all just ended up tasting like tortillas anyway because we made them too thick. Oops! Erin and i also made a fabulous tortilla man out of dough that we named Fred. That made the ladies laugh pretty hard.

During the afternoon we went on a little shopping expedition to the market behind the big cathedral. It was underground and reminded me so much of Chinatown in NYC. So many of the stores had the same things and I ended up buying a hand crafted halter top shirt that looks a lot like Free People and a gift for my parents. Olivia got two hand made hammocks for 40 quetsales which is like five dollars! Pretty good bargain I'd say.


Tonight we have been playing a lot of Sporkle, which is basically a trivia game online that can range anywhere from pop culture to geography and educational games. That ate up a lot of our time. Now we are all going to bed and looking very forward to tomorrow! Until then, much love. XO Carolyn