Cuatro

   After Carlos finished his speech about the upcoming week,  Crystal and Steve (the married couple on the trip) walked up the stone path behind the main building to the kitchen to collect the evening meal.  Upon his return, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Steve was carrying a hot pot of spaghetti through the volunteer door. Also, I was disgustingly confused to discover that behind him, Crystal followed steadily with a large pot full of fried beans. Beans? What an odd food to combine with spaghetti.  After questioning this combination to the rest of the group, I was told by the ambassadors that fried beans was a favourite food to Honduras and was served with almost anything. With an open mind, I decided that I was in a different country with completely different customs so I thought I should probably try their interesting food mixtures.  Also, by this time my stomach was growling louder than an air horn. Not caring about the weird combination of food in front of me, I plopped three spoonfuls of beans on my plate beside the pasta and with one last harsh grumble of my abdomen, quickly devoured the unusual meal; which surprisingly I found tasted quite good.

       It turned out Maddie and I were the fastest eaters of the crew so while everyone was still consuming their meal, my friend and I rushed out of the volunteer house to see what other beauties El Hogar possessed.  After exiting the narrow building we decided to take a closer look at the structure positioned at the opposite end of the courtyard that reminded me of a small warehouse. White metal poles stood erect between faded green wooden walls that did not reach the roof, but left about a three foot high windowless gap stretched across the side of the building.  Brightly coloured pictures of hearts, rainbows, and the words; Dios es amor, with the english translation; God is Love were painted across the green wooden wall.  Maddie and I ventured up the stairs beside the building and stepped through the open doorway to discover we were walking onto a small stage. It was an auditorium; a very colourful auditorium.  All the walls were bright  blue, except the wall at the front of the stage which was painted with a muriel of children celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I noticed, however, that there were no seats for audience members to sit; only a vast concrete floor that stretched from the stage to the opposite end of the building.  Benches were piled up on the left side and I assumed they were used for people to sit on during presentations. Maddie and I looked to the right and were shocked to see something that was definitely not native to an auditorium.  A variety of exercise equipment, from bikes to ellipticals were scattered across the length of the floor.  It looked as if they were shoved to the side of the building last minute.  With one quick excited glance at my friend, the two of us jumped at the chance to try the machines out.  If Maddie and I had anything in common, it was our love of personal fitness, and after being cramped in a plane for two days it was exceptionally good to use our muscles again.   

         10 minutes later we emerged from the auditorium more then ready to continue our exploration of El Hogar.  The children were still busy at their chores and I wondered when they were off duty, until I remembered that Carlos told us their play time started at 6 o’clock.  I glanced at my watch to learn that it was 5:50.  Maddie and I still had a good ten minutes to look around before our duty called and their play began.  We hopped up the stone path in vast anticipation to explore the rest of the orphanage and passed two more green buildings that were positioned on the left of the path.  Looking to the right, we noticed two large stone sinks that were currently occupied with two small bodies hoisted upon them, slurping water from the tap.

            “Hola!” I cheered to the thirsty boys. They turned their tiny faces in surprise to learn who the unfamiliar voice belonged too. Then, without moving from their position on the sinks, replied “hola” and  proceeded to noisily guzzle more water. Thinking of the unusual occurrence we had just witnessed, Maddie and I giggle to ourselves as we continued up the path.  We were suddenly faced with the decision to either progress forward, or turn right and walk down a new path with a beautiful garden in the middle, dividing the passage in two.  We decided to take a chance on the new walkway, and passed a building with the words biblioteca painted across the door. I suddenly had a flash back to grade nine french class and remembered that bibliothèque was library in French.  Could it be possible that biblioteca meant the same thing?  I asked Maddie and she confirmed my suspicion and also told me that French and Spanish were similar in a lot of ways.  Learning this, I really started to regret dropping grade ten French. Maddie and I were pleasantly surprised to see a painting of the familiar red and white Canadian flag intertwined with the blue and white Honduran flag on the wall of the library.  I figured that must have been painted by past missionaries who also hailed from Canada. We looked past the biblioteca and saw a building with a sign hanging on the door that read cosina.                                    

              “What does cosina mean?” I asked Maddie who was also looking at the spanish word.

               “Hmm I’m not too sure,” she admitted as she approached the building and peered through the window. “I’m guessing it means kitchen, since thats what’s inside.”

               “Oh, so this is where we come to collect our meals then,”  I said as I joined my friend in front of the green structure and also looked through the window only to discover it was in fact, a kitchen.  A white square table stood in the middle of the room which I noticed was extremely clean and almost empty looking.  

               “Yeah, I suppose so,” my friend answered backing away from the wall. “Anyway, lets finish looking around. We only have a few minutes before the kids have play time.”   I agreed with my friend and we continued on our exploration.  In front of us was a colourfully painted wall that stood in between a grassy hill and the concrete floor we were currently standing on. Two blue and green painted teeter totters were positioned on the hill amongst a sea of scattered red benches.   Looking past the play structures I noticed an extravagant plain white building on the top of the hill which stood apart from the rest of the orphanage.  It was the only building I had seen at El Hogar that was not painted at least one shade of the rainbow. Maddie energetically jumped over the wall with ease while I casually took the stairs that I scoped out in pure laziness. After approaching the building we looked in the glass door to see a room that housed a T.V. and one black couch surrounded by pure white walls. Milky tiles shimmered off of the ground, creating an angelic feel to the room.  The scene was so different from the rest of the orphanage, it made me wonder if we were still at El Hogar.  In fear of trespassing, my friend and I turned around and ran down the hill, this time headed in the direction of the large open space we saw in front of us earlier, before deciding to go down the new path.     We passed a small building that was of course, painted green and ended up standing in the middle of a wide concrete floor.  Long wooden two story buildings that were red in colour stood behind us, and in front of us was the path leading back to the volunteer building.  To our right there was another open space filled with more benches and a large fence which overlooked the city.  Maddie and I were just about to explore that space when a group of boys came running up to us with a soccer ball.  I checked my watch. Yup, it was 6 o’clock right on the needle point.  

            “Como te llamas?”  the tallest boy asked me.  He was wearing a red and white baseball cap and casually supporting the soccer ball between his waste and his upper arm.  He was evidently the “leader” of this particular group of boys. I also noticed that his right eyebrow had slight line in the middle where no hair had grown, and I wondered if it was a birth defect.  

                   “He asked what your name is,” Maddie told me when I looked at her in confusion. “To respond, just say mi llamo followed by your name.”  I nodded and turned to the boy who was patiently awaiting my answer.

                   “Mi llamo Brianna.” I said, grinning.  This Spanish thing would be easy, I thought to myself. That is, as long as I had Maddie with me at all times. I had completely forgotten to watch those youtube tutorials before I left and was now definitely regretting that. 

                   “Mi llamo Maddie,” my friend said to the boy “Y tu?”      

                   “Mi llamo Alexis,” the boy replied.  His voice was deep and he spoke carelessly, with a slouch to his stance.  I figured he definitely had to be one of the older boys.                            

                   “Mucho gusto, Alexis,” Maddie said, flashing her pearly white smile. One by one the rest of the boys proceeded to introduce themselves.  There was Jorge, Jonathan, Alejandro, Tulio, Junior and Mario.  With my luck at remembering names, I would forget most of them by morning. 

                   “You play soccer?” Alexis asked us, holding up the soccer ball. So he did speak English. I shook my head and quickly answered “no.”  I had never been interested in sports, which was another major difference between Maddie and I. We actually had so many differences, sometimes I wondered why we were even friends. I guess opposites attract, right? 

                      “Si!” Maddie replied excitedly.  The boys kidnapped my friend and began forming teams while I awaited alone by the sidelines. I decided to go look for some other children to play with.  I may not have Maddie to translate everything for me, but I could easily play with the kids without communicating.   At least, I thought I could.