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.