nov 8

It’s raining ants.

Well actually, it’s more of a light drizzle, but nonetheless, I’d rather them stay grounded. Apparently it’s normal to have the mutant ants everywhere for a few days during the rainy season. Okay, so it’s not actually raining ants… but they climb up the walls and the ceiling and wait for the opportune moment to drop to the ground and terrorize not only with bites, but with their numbers. I found one on my arm and I freaked out. They started dropping on us when Tarynn was helping Lily (one of the Seniors) get ready for a banquet. Tarynn was extremely excited to do her hair, makeup, and nails. I’d like to say that I helped, but that’s really not my thing. I get confused when it comes to makeup. So I did what I could do… I took pictures and held the mirror up. There were lots of people in our room watching her get ready and we started to notice the mutant ants crawling around. After everyone left, we were trying to find out where they were all coming from. Tarynn found quite a few on her bed and there were some on the floor and the walls and shelves. I felt sorry for our bad luck until I saw Dario’s bed. He’s one of the boys that lives in the same room. His bed was covered in ants. We didn’t have it that bad after all. Tarynn is going to run tomorrow, but she’s still up because she’s afraid the ants are going to swarm her. She has the raid and is spraying all the mutants that she sees. I don’t blame her. I’m not a big fan of them either. One of the past volunteers told us a story about how one of them fell asleep and when he woke up there were a bunch of ants crawling into his mouth. Yeah. Bad story. We don’t like ants. It’s funny though because whenever I tell Dario (boy with the ants on his bed) that I hate ants (hormigas), he jokes and says that they’re not hormigas, but that they’re my amigas (friends). Hardly. I’m pretty sure he won’t want to be friends with them anymore.

Let me back up to the beginning of the day…

We had planned to go to the City Mall in San Pedro Sula today. We talked to Nelson and asked him if we could use his little mini van because we were going to go with another volunteer and the two ladies at the infa (plus their families of course). He talked to us the week before and asked us if we really wanted to go because he didn’t want to lend the van if it was just the two ladies that wanted to go. We assured them that we did and then to our surprise, we were greeted by a pick up truck on Sunday morning. Nelson decided last minute that he had to use his van and told someone else to let us use their pick up truck. This would’ve been fine, but rain clouds were covering us. He knew it was a long trip to San Pedro Sula and there’s always the possibility of rain… it is the rainy season. The poor kids were all wrapped up in the back of the truck when we met them. I’m not going to go into detail, but we were all very unhappy with Nelson. Anyways, when we got there, we all forgot about the troubles back at the Hogar. I did not buy a single thing other than food. I was very happy.

Also, Marta and her little brother Manuel are gone. Their mom took them back home. I don’t know how I feel about this. They weren’t living with her for a reason. It’s dangerous. I want to pull an Anne Sullivan and take her to a place where she can’t see anyone and have an extreme time of discipline. She and one of the other girls got in a knife fight maybe two weeks ago. Mirna (the lady who takes care of the few kids living at the infa) was telling me that one of her girls, Lendi, used to be worse than Marta. She threatened Isabelle with a knife and she was out of control. She said that she prayed every night and would sleep with one eye open. I would have never guessed because Lendi is such a sweet girl now. She listens when I tell her things and she always gives us hugs. I just feel like Marta could be the same way. But thing is… Maria Jose has tried, Txus has tried, I’m sure all the volunteers have tried. I’ve tried. I really have.