Just three days later and look all we are doing.

It is Wednesday and the last thee days have been busy. We have one adolescent and a group of three primary students who are receiving grief counseling. There is a Foundation here that provides it and they are very good. The cost is very reasonable and those of you who have made danations to my work are helping to support this. We have a number of girls who have had either their mother or father die. Part of my work here is arranging this and taking the girls to the appointments. This week we had an appointment on Monday and another today - for the group.

Since on Monday the Oragization of American States met here in Panama there was no school for any of our girls. Since we usually don't have a child care worker during the afternoon school time (12 to 5+) it fell to the secretary, myself and Eva who washes and takes care of clothes. We ate lunch a little later. Then we had a siesta - on the bed and quiet. I was in the room with the youngest and next to the room of the next oldest and after a few admonishments things worked out. After that Beni (our secretary) made bracelets with the older girls and I did a play time and arts and crafts with the youngest. For snack time we had the birthday cake for the girls with birthdays in May.

Tuesday was a 'normal' school day. We did homework and reinforcement in the morning and all the girls left for school at noon as usual. Two came back because theirteachers weren't there and we worked hard to math and reading on the third and first grade level. Estefany (in 1st grade - but 9) is very good in math and we played a new game which involved adding and chance. It was possible to get a good score and then lose it all because it was temping to toss the dice again and a losing combination came up.

Today I worked with Graciela - our most recent additon studying science. She is in 5th grade. They are learning about diseases of the excretory system and hygiene of the same. Then off to the therapist with the little group. Also we started having several of the girls tested by a psychologist - these are girls who seem to have more difficulties in learning than some of the others. Two more will be tested on Friday. The psychologist comes here to do the tests.

Our director is in a week long seminar about raising resources for our kind of program. We had lunch together and she says the seminar is very good.

Then I went to one of the primary schools to pick up the first report cards of the year. We have 10 girls in this school, Arebe de Egypto, and the 8 who are above kinder received cards. All did did quite well. All with have an average of 79 or 80 and up to the high 90s. Johana and Kenia have 4th and 5the places in their classrooms.

More later.

Tia Sue