Christmas Cards from the Girls

The girls made Christmas cards for members of the Junta Directiva. Here are some. If you click on the picture it will enlarge. This is Daliana who just finished 8th grade. Remember that the school year here is from March to December.

Sinilda with her card. She and her sister were the first women in their families to go to school. They have both finished second grade with flying colors and both can read well. Also, their niece (who is the same age) went to school this year and also their younger sister went to Kindergarten.

Johana with her card. She has done well in the 5th grade this year. Johana has been with use since 1st grade.

Chochi or Maria Isabel is Sinildas sister. She had the highest average of the primary school students, 94!

Stefani has just finished 2nd grade and has done well. Stefani really likes to help.

More this week, Tia Sue

Felíz Navidad desde Panama

Christmas party at the Home. We have finished our Christmas lunch (ham, potato salad etc. and are now giving out gifts. Santa Clause this year is the director and her helper is Yanitzia. Here Maria is receiving her gift. We are outside the chapel, living rrom and study area for the girls who can study independently.

Sinilda is showing off the doll she chose from a fine assortment of dolls given to the girls by a friend of the home.

This is the Nativity scene outside St. Pauls. It has a little fence around it as it is on the side walk near the entrance to the building. The star is my contributation, made from foam with a sticky side so it is adhering well to the wall. The custom is to put a few coins in a little cup when passing by.

Celebration of the life of Elizabeth Leigh

Today we celebrated the completed life of Lizzy Leigh. The service was in the Balboa Union Church, which she attended a lot, switching from St, Lukes to Balboa Union and sometimes to St. Mary´s a Catholic Church nearby. She often went to two of these on a Sunday. Her ashes are in a simple metal box under the veil. (If you click on the pictures they will enlarge.)
The service was at Balboa Union because the Episcopal Cathedral is getting a new roof. Lizzy is holding John about 29 years ago. Mary, her daughter, pulled together a lot of pictures which were stuck to a large bedspread downstairs in the parish hall.

As you can see the church was full - I estimate between 400 and 500 people. For about 40 minutes before the service were a number of musical offerings, solos, choir and instrumental, celebrating Lizzy´s contributions to music, choirs, helping young musicians.
The Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Panama was the celebrant. Rev. Michael Dresbach helped plan, coordinated, and preached the sermon. We sang a number of wonderful hymes: What is This Place, My Life Flows On, Earth and All Stars, Come My Way My Truth My Life, Come Down O Love Devine, Sing My Tongue the Glorious Battle and All Creatures of Our God and King. (You can look them up by name using Google.)
At the commendation of the body, the Bishop asked us to applaude her into heaven, like an applause for an encour. For the Prayers of the People, all of the members of her family got up and each one read a section. The service ended with the choir (Cantemus) and instruments proforming Worthy Is the Name of the Lord, from Handel´s messiah. Lizzy´s sisters Martha and Kate and her daughter Mary joined the choral group. One the left is her sister Martha and on the right Kate.

Elizabetth Leigh (Lizzy)

My very good friend Elizabeth Leigh died Saturday morning of heart failure. She had been in the hospital in intensive care for more than 4 weeks. Here she is sitting in her living room. Lizzy was a singer and played the Viola. She sang in just about every choir in Panama in the more than 30 years she had lived here. She was also active in The British Aid Society which provided care and visits for, at first, elderly Afro-antillians and later anyone who had no one to care for them. Lizzy was know for her extra delicious baked chicken and here she is showing us the one we are about to eat. You can see from the background that her house was full of a great variety on wonderful thing. Books and baskets and carvings from wounan indiginas were one of her joys. She acted as a middle person for the sale of indiginous arts and crafts - always paying up front.

. Here she is at her dining room table. Her husband, Dr. Egbert Leigh, (a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute here in Panama) is in the background. Lizzy and Bert and their Children Mary and John have been my extended family for more than 20 years. I learned a lot from lizzy - a lot of practical things. One was how to pick up a snake without getting bitten. This lesson was when a small BOA (12 to 15 inches) fell from a rafer under her house where a group learning basket weaving was working. Unter her tutaledge I have also learned to make delicious chocolate sauce from scratch.

She will be greatly missed by her friends and colleagues.

Multiplication

Three primary school girls are playing a multiplication game found at www.multiplication.com. It is a really fun and effective way for kids to practice. Here they are playing the video game the can play after answering 15 facts correctly.
Another picture of the same thing.
Guissell is concentrating on doing long division. The format for division is always 3579 : 16.

Birthday Parties at the home.

Tuesday was Enibeth´s 10th birthday.
Although we celebrate Birthdays all together every month sometimes a girl´s godmother will get a cake for the very day. This is very typicle of birthday cakes here. You can see the basket of recycled candles. I will give Eni a picture of the cake and one of the pictures below. Turning 10 means some new challenges for her. She will now wash her own clothes by hand and also learn to iron and be responsible to iron her school uniforms and dress for church on Sunday. Here she is with all 10 candles lit. On her right is the director, Elba Flores, and next to her is Guissell and the left is Mari Isabel who shares the same last name but is not closely related. Next to her is Evelia. This year Eni has mastered the multiplication tables.
Here is the whole gang - just about. The adult on the right is one of the House Mothers or child care workers. She grew up in the home and is now studying in the University at night.
The three in the blue shirts are in middle school or junior high - grades 7,8,9 and the two with while shirts and blue ties are in High School. To the right is our secretary Beni, who also grew up in the home. She too is going to the University at night. Our well liked cook is on the left, nearer to Eni and the other woman does the laundry - sheets, towels, Sunday clothes and mends. She also washes the youngest kids clothes.
Here she is making a wish! If you make a comment I can show it to the girls and also they can use my blog to answer through comments.

Get to know the Girls´ Home

The introductory sentences for this blog are at the end. I haven´t acquired all of the skills of puting a blog together. Here are Maria and Stefani on the swing set. In the background ate the windows of the youngest girls´dorm and the stencil flowere, beed and butterflies adorning the wall. (You can make the picture BIG by clicking on it.) The door on the left leads into our computer room.
The front part of our busito (a 15 pasenger van into which we can get a lot of people). The director of the home is on the right. Next to her is Evelia, then Stefani and Maria. They are about to leave for school. All are in the afternoon turn of school. They do homework in the morning.
Graciela by the door leading to the Parking lot.
Posing in front of our sign are Maria, Rosa, Guiselle, and her sister Stefani. Afternoon school is from 12:30 to 5:30 - 6 for the oldest girls.
Here is a view of the porch where the girls do homework and also hang out and play. Behind it is the the classroom where most of the girls have a desk and do their homework. This year only 4 girls really study independently!

Here are some pictures of the home itself. I took them for a report the director was making for MIDES - minesterio de desarollo social - which over sees us.

pictures

Here are the girls in our dining room. It is probably breakfast since they have bowls and their blue plastic glasses. Pro niñez bought us the tables and chairs a couple of years ago. Some of the old ones could have been from the very beginning of the home 87 years ago.
This is Maria - our newest girl. She is 11 and in third grade. She came with a lot of medical problems but we have worked on a lot of them and are continuing to do so - so she is much better!
Four of the primary girls ready for school and posing in front of our sign.

Now I can use pictures again. My new computer (the first one I have owned) is great. I love it.

I´m back in Panama.

I have been back in Panama for about 10 days and I have been really busy. This week is take kids to the Dr. week. Graciela had her monthly appointment of control and an appointment with a cardiologist. (She is our young woman with kidney failure.) He hemoglobin is going up ' from a low of 5 it is now up to 10.4 ' this is due to a new manufacturer of the medicine she receives to help her make hemoglobin plus a lot of iron tonic. Her heart is ok but is somewhat enlarged because of the severe anemia. I saw her school grades today and they are good 'basically as they always are.

Yesterday was take 3 adolescents to their monthly psyquiatric appointment. The Dr talks to one of them alone and then works with the three together. He also saw our newest girl and he says that she appears to have some syndrome. We are working with her on various medical fronts and she is growing and doing better. Even though she is overage (11) to receive the special nutrative crema (a drink) he was able to get her 6 one pound bags. She will get it twice each day with extra milk. She is gaining weight but is not getting taller as yet.

The last Sunday I was in Philly I had a chance to preach about my work here and got some deeply appriciated donation. Also the Sunday School at my home church is going to try to raise some money each month to buy more fruit.

I bought a new computer (my first - a laptop) and think I will be able to add pictures to my blog again soon.

Blessings, Sue

Hi from Philly

I am part way through a 2 week vacation in Philly. It is nice to be here and things are going well. I have spent time in a book store almost every day. There are a number near where I am staying - Barnes and Noble, Boaders, the Penn Bookstore (also a Barnes and Nobel but geared more towards a university community). I have shared meals with a number of friends and spent today with my oldest grandson (Saveen, 12). We ate Korean food, went to The Academy of Natural Sciences (visited the butterfly house and a exhibition on the work of Gregor Mendal - who discovered genetics. He was very interested in the latter. At the museum bookstore we got a small 3-D puzzle of a dinosaur with 20 pieces which I needed help help with. After that we had icecream and then played farkle - a fun game using 6 dice. I am going to try to get some pictures on line.

GRANVENTA de PATIO *** PATIO SALE

Yesterday and today a number of us prepared for the Giant Garage sale. Not in a garage but in the parish hall Saint Paul's. There were a number of volunteers and we unpacked, priced, hung up (after a church member putup some wire for us to use).

The big sale is tomorrow and I'll write about it later. I have a lot of pictures --- so hope to be able to get them posted soon - I just need a little help!

Good News

Today was Graciela´s monthly appointment and good news - her hemoglobin is increasing. Now it is 9.8 - it was down to 5 once and 6.2 more recently and she had to have two blood transfusions. Now with a different brand of one of her important medications she is making her own hemoglobin again.

I have lots of pictures but need some help in getting them into the computer - so please be patient.

Fire Cat

To see a picture of Fire Cat do back to my January 1st entry.

Fire Cat

To see a picture of Fire Cat do back to my January 1st entry.

Back from Bocas and more

Friday morning, still in Bocas, I went to a beautiful, new , botanical Garden and had a great tour with the owner and creator. You can enjoy it too:  www.botanicalgardenbocasdeltoro.com    It was a wonderful two hours because it is a beautiful place with 40 varieties of heliconia, lots of different ginger plants, lots of palm tree from around the world - including 4 or 5 travelers' palm which are 4 years old. We saw monkeys. Another great thing was that I learned that I can make a two hour slow walk, some of open ground, up some hills and down, using my cane!  That is like opening a new world for me. (the cane is for my aching knees).

I got back to the hotel before 11 and had a quick lunch from the gourmet shop next door, showered, checked out, and headed walking to a water taxi that would take me to Changuinola in an hour. I now can consider doing something in a boat.  The trip was delightful, through an inland waterway - not bumpy. It left me at Finca 60 - that is a banana finca - and then I took a taxi to the airport. Graciela and her mother showed up in pleanty of time and then came two or three brothers to send her aff back to Panama. I got a promise form Roberto (brother closest to her age) to come back with me to Panama City in January to talk to her doctor and have some preliminary tests to see if he could be a candidate to donate a kidney to her. Pray for us.

Yesterday, Saturday, was fairly regular. I often help a university student with English on Saturday afternoon - and I did this day too. Went out to lunch with a friend and then drove to Gamboa to vist the friends I aften visit on weekends - the Leighs, their three cats and two dogs, and my special cat friend, firecat.

Today was church. Next Saturday is our big Patio Sale - aimed at providing clothes for the people who live in the neighborhood and the people who part of our food for the hungry program.  We gave between 20 and 30 people a snadwhich, juice and cookies to have for the supper on Sunday.  They get a bag of food on the 4th Sunday. They themselves help with the distribution of the food and also with packing the bags on the morning of the 4th Sunday. Several also help out on Sunday morning mopping up spills, sweeping, and moving things in and out of the kitchen. One of the youth group makes the sandwiches and another woman packs the juice and cookies in a bag to give out. Today when wecame down from the service I couldn't find the juice and cookies and said to my friend who packs them ' someone stole the juice and cookies!'  She said no, she had hidden them (in the oven!).

Water Taxi and Butterfly Garden

This morning after a breakfast of hot choclate, oange juice, fruie and eggs scrambled with bacon (this is part of my room at El Hotel Bahia) I found a water taxi and went to a near by Butterfly Garden. The day is beautiful and sunny. It was marvelous walking through the garden house and have colorful butterflys flitting around. I got some pictures and will try to post some eventually.

Tomorrow I am going to do something adventurous. I will take a small boat (18 seats) from Bocas to Changuinola - arriving there at about 1:30. Then I will meet Graciela at the airport aand we fly back to Panama at 4:40. Thats the plan si Dios quire.

I am back!!!

Greetings from Bocas del Toro in Western Panama. Yesterday Graciela and I flew to Changuinola in Bocas de Toro province so that she can visit her family at her home for 4 days. Her mom and brother Roberto were at the airport to meet her and after exchanging greetings they went off to shop for the food she needs - and the rest of the family can enjoy. I will meet her in the airport Friday about 2 and we will fly back to Panama and her dialysis machine. Right now I am on Isla Colon in Bocas Town staying at an historic hotel and enjoying having time to do different things. I will leave by boat for Changinola abot noon on Friday.

This week and next the kids are on school vacation. School is half over for the year (March to December) so many are visiting family and some are staying at the home.

I have recovered almost completely from my breast Cancer operation and treatment. I still have to have followup appointment (rest of my life) and am taking tomoxifen for the next 2 or 3 years - with very few side effects. Dry eye is one and I use artificial tears for that. I occasionally have a hot flash.

At the beginning of June I had a new experience. On Monday morning my heart started to beat very hard and I had pain in my jaw, neck and shoulders. I drove to the Diocesian office and the Bishop and a very nice young man -Oscar - took me to the emergency room and ultimately I was in the semi intenisve car unit ar Hospital Santo Tomas (a hospital for people with few resources and one that has very up to date heart equipment) I only stayed in the SICU for 12 hours and was moved to the cardiac floor and ward at 4 AM! I then stayed 4 days, stopped taking a lot of the medicine I have been taking and getting some new ones. I am doing very well and have most of my energy back.

At the home I continue doing primarily two things besides being a general backup help. Those are taking the girls who are sick to their appointments and taking accutely sick kids to a nearby clinic. Most of our appointments are at Children's Hospital, Cerro Batea Health Center and occasional others. Graciela has a monthly appointment at Childrens for follow up of her chronic kidney failure and one of our new girls this year has had a lot of appointments with various disciplines since she came to us with a LOT of untreated medical problems. At Cerro Batea, one of the Ministry of Health centers 3 young adolescents see a Psychiatrist once a month and several have been tested by the psycholgist. Getting up early is a part of some of these appointment as it waiting. I always take something for me to do and also something for the girls.

The home is doing well but along with the rest of the world we are experiencing higher prices and therefor less spending power. If you feel like supporting our work get in touch with me by leaving a comment or writing to me.

In August I am going to Phildelphia for two weeks and looking forward to it. I shall enjoy the bookstores, museums, seeing my grandchildren and son, watching the olimpics on TV.

Recently I added to our library (kids library) by buying a nice lot of books on sale (10% to 70% with a few doller books thrown in) at my favorite chain of books stores here Hombre de la Mancha. We have a inpressive but messy library and the kids do a lot of reading.

A few musings on Sunday

Recently I visited Evelia's teacher - Maestra Ana. This yesr she is teaching 1st grade.  The two years previous she taught 3rd and then 4th grade. She has had some of our girls who needed a lot of good support and she did well with them.  I asked her how she liked teaching 1st grade and she said it is very busy. She likes Evelia and wants to keep her in her class although Evelia has a lot of learning differences and seem to me to be functioning on about a 3 year old level.

Last Wednesday I took her to have the first part of an IQ test - by a psychologist with the Ministry of Health.  While waiting I took out some photos I had of some of the girls to show her and Guiselle (who was my assistant - helping me with Evelia who might wander away while I am paying the bill).  I was astounded that Evelia could not say the name of most of the girls!  I knew her expressive vocabulary was small but thought that after living a year with us she would be able to say their names.  So, in the next couple of days I did a little "testing" and found that she knows all the girls' names when asked to give me the picture of "Jane" or to point to one of them. So I am going to try out deemphasizing saying the answer and let her choose it by pointing and then repeating the the name after I say it.  In the year she has been with us she has not learned to say the correct name of a color when asked.  Maybe we can get further along by emphasizing a moter response (pointing).  Another very weak area for her is anything with a pencil - although she has learned to color, so that writing the answer isn't an option.  I'll keep you informed.

Many of the youth who go to St. Paul's Church are from the neighborhood so very few go on to university after high school.  Our priest, Glenda, asked me to help one young woman who is going to the U and who is struggling with English. We have set up an appointment for Wednesday at 3:30. If this works out she and I will have made one of the first steps towards having homework help at St. Paul's.

Blessings, Tia Sue  

Update without pictures

We have a new staff member and one more girl has been added to the roles. Sra Carolina is working out well as a child care worker replacing Sra Secundina.

Our new girl is Maria del Carmen. She is 10 - almost 11 - and is in third grade and a good student. She came to us with a lot of medical problems so the last couple of weeks I have been focused on taking her to appointments as well as a taking a couple of others. The infections that she had are cleared up thanks to modern medicine and morderm medicines. Now we are looking into other medical issues. We have done the priliminary stuff at Childrens Hospital and she started with a Cardiology Apt. on the 22. She is cute, bright and personable and is doing well in school.

School is starting its second month. We have 2 in first grade, 3 in second, 2 in 3rd. These girls all need a lot of supervision and help to do their homework. All our girls go to school in the public schools nearby. We also have girls in every grade from 4th to 10th. I do a lot of help with math and have mastered it up through 7th grade ' which is not high enough to to help Yanitcia with Algrbra II. We do have a group of students doing their social service work on Saturdays and they are a big help. The two in 10th grade take French as well as English and one of the teachers who comes with the girls from LaSalle, speaks French and is helping them

Tia Sue

Social Service Work

We are blessed with many 11 and 12th graders doing the required 80 hours of social service required of every student in Panama. Yesterday we started with a group which worked with us last year when they were in 11th grade. They are from La Salle a private school and they like to have me speak to them in English. Now in 12th they are back for 8 weeks and each have one or more girls assigned to them. These pictures are from another group of social service students from a different school who were with us in February. In this picture a student is working with Kenia on practicing the multiplication tables.
Here Sinilda is working on reading or math. She is one of the two girls (sisters) who attended school last year as the first women in their family to go to school. Both did well in school and are now in 2ond grade. There is no (or possible only a very small chance) that one of them could skip a grade to bring her up closer to her age peers. This year her older sister is sending her girls and boys to school with money she makes by selling me backets and masks which I then sell to people visiting the church here.
This young women is working with Evelia. Evelia has some learning differences. After 3 weeks she had learned to print the first two letters of her first name - and that is quite an accomplishment.
Here Graciela is improving her skills in writing paragraphs and in understanding what she reads. She is in 6th grade this year and again I am helping her with math. While I was visiting my dad in the last three years of his life I set about reviewing arithmatic and basically I have mastered it up through 7th grade plus a very little bit of beginning algebra. Yesterday I helped Graciela with subtraction with natural numbers (the ones we count with) because she had to understand some properities of subtraction. One is that if you add the difference (that is the answer) to the smaller number you will get the bigger number. This has a special name in Spanish. The second is that if you subtract a 0 from any number the difference (answer will be the number you subtracted from) and right now I can't remember the third one but when I have the book in had I can explain it!

The last week was very full and we received a new girl into the home who is Maria. I will post pictures and introduce her soon.

Tia Sue

Palm Sunday Pictures

Here we are Palm Sunday getting ready to bless the palms outside the front door of Saint Pauls. Read the entry made last week that tells about Palm Sunday without pictures.
If you click on the picture and make it big you will notice that both people have palms and the policeofficer has a pink paper which invited all in the neighborhood to Celebate Easter with us. WE also had a two motercycle escort and at least one of them had his palm and paper on the back.
Here Reverenda Glenda is giving palms to a neighbor and if you look carefully the neighbor who lives upstairs has lowered a rice bag on a rope and Glenda is inserting palms and pink papers. The two youth are members of St. Pauls. The young man in yellow has finished training to be an acolyte.
This young man is happy to receive his palm.

Here you can see the length of the procession. The man at the back is bringing up the rear.

Valentine Mural

This is the mural that the girls made for Valentines Day using the new and old Sizzix (A MACHINE TO CUT VARIOUS THINGS into great designs. They also did a couple of heart projects that I had suggested. That day or the day before they all learned to fold a piece of paper and cut out a heart. We start with magazine pages for practice and then use the colored paper. Click on the picture to see it BIG.

Palm Sunday at St. Pauls and after

Sorry no pictures tonight but I have a lot so they will come later.

Our Palm sunday service began with blessing of the palms and then a procession around two blocks of the community. We had extr palms to give out to people passing by and pink flyers to invite people to our Easter Celebration next Sunday. The youth and many others were very active in giving out palms and many youth and I gave out the flyers too. Taxi drivers were stopping to request palms; one man ran dow srom the second floor to get two; at another apartment a family lowered an empty rice bag on a rope to haul up palms. There were many other similar stories. We had a two motercycle police excort with at least one of the moter cycles with a palm leaf attached to the back with the pink flyer. I have many pictures.

We arrived back at the church and contined the service with a traditional reading of the passion story. We have trained some new acolytes and they (6) ranging from 12 year old or so to one in the tercera edad (older). They will all serve next Sunday.

After the service we had our breakfast as always and gave sandwiches, cookies, and juice to those of us who wouldn't have dinner on a Sunday evening, something that we do every week. There are 3 or 4 of us to make sure this happens for about 15 to 25 people each Sunday.

The third Sunday of each month it is my turn (as a vestry member) to help could the offering money - so we did that.

Then I bought a cell phone card (to add money to a cell phone) for a sick friend so she could make as well as receive calls. I also took her a bulletin and a palm.

Next was lunch and the restaurant was uncharactically packed at 2 PM. I singed up for a table for 1 (frequently I go to this restaurant (Pencas) by myself and enjoy lunch and reading La Prensa, one of the news papers here. Today while witing for a table I started a conversation with a English speaking man and his wife. She had worked -voluntered - at an orphanage in Bolivia. After they got a seat they realized I was alone they can back and asked me to join them and I had a delightful lunch. We exchanged e-mails and phone numbers.

Next on the list was a visit to a nursing home where a member of St. Pauls (almost 88) and a friend (81) live. I took them crosses made from palms. We sang, I told them about the service, we did a short form of evening prayer. They both speak English (and Spanish) but do have many visitors or other people to speak English with. While there I made a new friend Tony Lee, who speaks Spanish and is younger but probably had brain damage or is retarded. He will have to become one of the people I visit.

By now it was 5 so I drove back to Gamboa to visit my friends human and animal (cats and dogs)

Pictures will come soon.

Tia Sue

Another treatment notice

Friday I had an appointment with my oncologist - a wonderfull doctora whom I like very much. I thought we were going to talk more about the "after radiation" treatment - but the tamoxifen treatment (1 pill a day for 2 years followed by a change in medication) began Saturday. The most obvious to everyone side effects are hotflashes, a lot of sweating and suddenly turning red. Turning red is the one that interests me the most so I will let you know when that happens. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

I'm ready for radiation therapy

Today I had two tatoos and a mold made to hold me in the right position for the upcoming radiation therapy. It will start MOnday and then M-F for 6 weeks at 2:30 PM. To celebrate this, after a talk with a friend by phone, I went to Crapes and Waffles (it is here in Panama) and had a passion fruit drink, a super salad and some almond ice cream.

Pictures first day of school.

This is a typical school - all public schools are apinted like this. This is not a school where any of our girls go. It is in the middle of banana plantations in Bocas del Toro. If you click on the picture it will enlarge. Most of the primary school girls lined up for the usual picture. Starting at the left: Graciela (6th), Sini (2), Chochi (2), Karla(1st).Guisel (4), Estefani (2) Eni (4) Evelia (1st), Johana (5th), Dona (6th). Missing is Kenia (6) who was washing the lunch dishes.
Here are Guisel and her little sister Karla with a Evelia in the back seat of the van. The are the last kids to be delivered to school because if they were the first group they have too much free time!
Yanitcia ready for 10th grade.
Yeri ready for 10th grade.

Missing are the Jr. high kids - I'll post them later.

First day of school

Sorry no pictures tonight! Today was the long awaited first day of school. All our girls go to school for the afternoon session after doing their homework in the morning. That session, vespertina, starts at 12:30 and ends at 5:30 for primary school and 6:03 for secundary school. All of the primary girls in regular classes - the majority - went to school in their new uniforms (donation), new shoes, and with one notebook and a pencil or pen depending on the grade. Many of the girls have the same teacher they had last year - which is good in all cases. For the first time in their school carera Johana and Kenia will be different classrooms - in 5th grade. Both of these girls are excellent students.

The Jr. High girls didn't have school and probably wont all week because the parents of the morning session had a big demonstration and blocked a major highway - so classes are cancelled at Leon A Soto Jr. High at least until next week.

We have two girls entering 10th grade (highschool or segundo ciclo) The have new uniforms and also. Both said that the first day was good. They were in different schools last year and are good students. Yeri, now 15, has been with us since she was 18 months old and so has spent her entire school carera with us. Yanitcia, also 15, started first grade with us and also is a good but somewhat rebellous student. She has a gift of drawing.

After several years of looking I found dry erase pens in all the basic colors. Since the K to 2 kids get home an hour earlier than the others we had fun with them - having the kids write the name of the color. Just by having this short fun activity I now know the Estefani and Chochi (second grade) need to practice writing the letter Z (in cursive - they write in cursive from the start), practice woords with Y and LL which make a very similar sound and start to learn the words that start with B and which start with V (which basically have the same sound in spanish. Vaca is cow and verde is green.

Hope to post some pictures tomorrow or Wednesday. We still don't have internet at the home.

Visit to Bocas - part 3

This is the school where Graciela went to school before she got sick. Other of the family have attended here as well. SHe has one younger brother who goes to 6th grade here this year.
Let me introduce Roberto, Graciela's brother who is one year older than she is. He is 17, is going into 10 th grade, likes math and received a years average in math of 92.
Graciela's older sister who is 34 and did not have the opertunity to go to school. Her kids are in school though.
The very best thing that could happen for Graciela is that a relative give a kidney. The family nad I had a talk about it in the airport. The first thing I told them was that we each (most of us )have two kidneys that that giving on to Graciela would not mean that they would die. We talked about that imn detail and about what the first steps would be to give this gift of love to her. Roberto is interested to see if he is a match and he asked me to take this picture of the book I gave them. Click on the picture to make it bigger. Pray for them both.