Tuesday, February 14, 2012

First trip to El Barranco

Yesterday was long, exhausting and most rewarding. We started out at 7:30 sorting the donations everyone brought...and boy did they bring donations.

We then jumped into our transport of choice. Some in the van and some of us in the back of the pick up.
On our way to El Barranco we stopped off at Tierra Linda to visit the preschool and for Debbie to visit one of her students. Debbie also brought balloons for the kids.

We also went to see a house that another group built for a family who's house was about to fall down. It turned out that the elderly man living there had an injured foot so we had Michelle...an OBGYN..look at his foot. We decided it was within 4 ft of her specialty so it worked for us.


Back into the vehicles and off to El Barranco. It was the first time I had arrived w/o the yard full of people. But never fear they all showed up within the hour. We had a light lunch and visited the kids in the preschool while we waited.
Brian got to meet his sponsored student,Elvis. Elvis is alive and in the house.

Once everyone arrived...we had to wait for the kids to get out of school...The children did their traditional dancing. Always a winner.
One of the dances is the monkey dance and audience participation is encouraged.


We then handed out our donations...these kids run to get in line to receive used clothing and shoes. This means so much to them.

During all of this chaos most of the group found children they wanted to sponsor in school. We broke our own record and sponsored 17 children. I don't have what it takes to describe how excited these children and families are to have the opportunity to go to school and get what we take for granted...an education.


Before it was all over we were exhausted and ready for dinner and drinks. This makes for a very long day but everyone enjoyed their encounter with these wonderful people.

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