La Grande

Today, we went to the school – La Grande.  This is on the side of a mountain about 15 minutes away.  There are 190 students in the school.  The school operates from 7am to 12pm.  The school is well organized and the children are very respectful.  It is in a very poor neighborhood and we understand it is dangerous…the children walk from up to one half hour away.  A request was made to us for uniforms for the children whose families cannot afford to buy them.  To get there, we drove up a very steep and bumpy hill straight up to the school.  The road ended at the steel school gate with a heavy metal chain with a padlock.  A watchman came and unlocked it and took us in.  We were enchanted by the school children and the teachers.  The process was lengthy to give the uniforms….each of the children were lined up and we sorted the uniforms by the list given and sizes.  Each child received their uniform individually and thanked us.  After the teacher showed us another classroom that the community is building – they have the walls but not enough $ for a roof.  She also showed us the computer classroom they have which is really nice…they asked for more computers.  All the older children were sitting using the computers.

This afternoon we went with Pablo to give the bullet proof vests to the policia and then to the bomberos (fire department) to give them a large supply of white t-shirts that they requested.  Also…mag flashlights and walkie-talkies.  Tonight we go to the Tela Rotary meeting. 

Desks for the school Tres de Mayo – this is the school that we completed.  The rural mountain community had the sides on the school.  We completed it with a roof, floor, windows, doors, sidewalk, entrance way…got water to their latrine…painted all.  Also, they had no desks – so we have ordered 30 desks for the students and a desk for the teacher and a swivel chair.  These have to be transported from San Pedro Sula and will arrive in 10 days to the school.

Currently we are finalizing all payments for all projects, transportation and a variety of items.  Each payment usually takes us about 3 times as long as we thought it would!

Trips back and forth to Juventud, to the Hogar (not open yet but they say within a couple weeks!), to the projects.

Weather has continued to be beautiful with sun, warmth and breezes.