A Wisconsible Conversation *Week 14*

        This week began with me finding out that Maestro wouldn’t be here until Friday which meant I had another week “off”. However, I already felt rested enough to get back to work, so I asked Eva for the key to the wood shop and went off to finish the shelves that Maestro and I have been working on. While working on the shelves, Mamí brought over a table she wanted me to sand down and repaint. So I had enough to keep me busy for this week! Since I had finished watching movies with the small girls over the weekend it was time to watch movies with the small boys. So once again four movies in four nights. One of the movies we watched was the Incredibles and in the Incredibles, Mr. Incredible eats a shrimp from a bowl so I asked the boys around me if they had ever had shrimp before and they said they hadn’t. Maybe that’ll be something I cook up for the kids. After the small boys I started watching movies with the Medium boys. I hit the bullseye with the Lego movie, the boys loved it and found it very funny. Then I sold the bag with the emoji movie that they had apparently seen before and disapproved of. The weekend was busy so I probably won’t get to watch another movie with them until after Cancún.

On Thursday I had a talk with Danielle about the fact that the small girls TV didn’t work with my flash drive. I told her that I’d be more than happy to buy a new TV for the house since theirs is old but Eva said I should just buy them the proper remote first then see if the TV works. So I went to town that afternoon for a remote and then obviously Bigos. I got both items and returned to the orphanage to test the new remote just to find out that I bought the wrong one. Since the TV is so old it will be hard to find a remote for it in town. So I’m going to have John bring one down for me and I’ll have it when I get back from Cancún.

At dinner on Thursday I got to have the most Wisconsiny conversation I’ve had since I left. I noticed Christian had an Oshkosh North shirt on that I had left down here a while back. Since Mike was standing near us I asked him if he had seen Christian’s shirt yet. Mike walked over and was really surprised and asked Christian If he knew where Oshkosh was. I explained to Christian that both me and Mike grew up within 20 minutes of Oshkosh. Then I went on to explain to Mike that my mom used to teach at Oshkosh North years ago and now she's teaching at Neenah(where Mike and I both graduated from). Then Mike asked if she was teaching at the brand new building that they finished building the summer after I graduated and I said yes. Then we went on a whole rant about how unnecessarily large the building is. Mike even commented that “that’s such a Neenah thing to do though” which I followed up with a subtle “anything to one up Kimberly, am I right?”(joke for the Fox Valley) and we both slapped our knees, cackled, and walked away with our backs hunched over(not actually).

On Saturday Mike brought Misael and I to town to cut some lumber. The orphanage ordered 5000 feet of lumber and all of it had to be cut in half horizontally. The orphanage didn’t have the machinery to cut it so it had to be in town. The place is owned by Mennonite Honduran-Americans that own the same restaurant that I mentioned back in week nine that Papí and Mamí took us to a couple years back. We worked all morning before Mike picked us up for lunch. We went to a buffet and ate some lasagna then went back to work. We didn’t finish on Saturday so we will have to go back on Monday. I went to the Medium boys house again on Saturday night, but what I didn’t know was that they had a surprise planned for the Tia(nanny) of the house for Mother’s Day. When they all got back to their house around 6pm, they walked the Tia in and sat her down in their living room. They showered her with gifts, washed her feet, and then even did a dance for her. After that is when we started The Emoji Movie.

Sunday was Mothers day which meant a lot of celebration for all of the mothers in the orphanage but what I didn’t expect was at church that morning I got to see Nino, an old friend of mine, who had come to visit the orphanage to pay his respects to Mamí. After the service I said happy mothers day to the majority of the mothers in Emmanuel then took Angel to the store for the first half of the morning. After talking with him for a bit I made my way over to the small girls house to help a little girl named Dunia with her homework. Dunia is the only girl in the small girls house that came from the large group of kids that arrived at Emmanuel the day before I did. Dunia attends school in town and has strict English classes. She's eight years old, does not speak a lot of English, but has a 4th grade level English book. I’m trying to find a good way to teach Dunia the English since my whole job back home is to find out how to make subjects easier and more understandable for elementary students. The problem is that Dunia’s homework is just way too far out of her league but I’m still going to try my best to help her. At night there was a party held for the mothers. First we ate. We had beef tacos with soda and then cake. While we were eating, multiple people came and rubbed cake on my face and hair. After that there was a game hosted strictly for mothers. There were numerous cups set upside down on a table, underneath all of them was a prize, but there was one cup that had an egg under it, which is pretty self-explanatory at this point. Then after that game they brought out another activity with jello, however, I left the room to wash off my face and hair at the spigot. While I was out there, Domanique, Graciela’s kid, came outside to get away from the noise and commotion so I decided to sit with him and talk for a while. He had a couple things he really wanted to get off his chest and I’m glad I was at that place at that time to be able to listen to him. As we were finishing up our chat, the party started to make its way outside since people were leaving. One girl came up and rubbed cake on my shirt which I wasn’t happy about, but I took it as an opportunity not as defeat. As some of the girls that had rubbed cake on my face earlier came out of the party, I offered them a big hug and as soon as I had one arm around them, I used my other arm to lift my shirt to wipe cake all over their face. I got two of em. After that, the night was over and a new week began. To be continued…