March 4

I feel like I have lice crawling all over me. There are two new girls at the Infa and they’ve got some serious lice problems. Every time I combed through their hair with the lice comb that the group from Andrews gave us, 5 lice would fall out… sometimes more. I’m not exaggerating. The poor kids are scratching their heads all the time. So today, I shampooed their heads with lice shampoo. Usually kids squirm and protest, but these girls did it willingly. So now after shampooing their heads and combing through it, I feel like the lice have jumped onto my head. We’ve been taught the valuable from preschool that it’s good to share. I guess these kids haven’t forgotten.

Another special moment happened while I was scrubbing uniforms. Paola came up behind me and watched me for a little bit (she is such a cutie). She started asking me questions about my family and where I live. She looked at me with huge eyes when I said that I live in the United States. She asked me how long I was going to be staying here and I told her that I have about three more months left. I stopped scrubbing because she looked at me with the huge eyes again. That’s when she turned serious and said, “Shearin, don’t go.” I guess it startled me because I wasn‘t expecting that from her. It wasn’t close enough to my departure date for them to be saying things like that. I told her that I have to go back to study and she said it again. She reminded me that there were places to study in Honduras. I almost died. What was I supposed to say to her? All I said was that I would try to visit and that I will cry very hard when I have to go. Thankfully some of her friends found her and pulled her away right at that moment. I didn’t know what else to say to her. I was so sad. I figured that if I feel this way now, I’m going to be a wreck in three months. Wish me luck.