Friday-It’s Hard to Say Goodbye

Somehow it’s already Friday ?. We had a busy morning at school. We combined the two classes and used the church building to have an hour of games, then an hour of music. The kids loved playing hot potato, clapping rhythms and, of course, singing. The younger children also played with math puzzles. All of the students traced their hands and we put the hands together in a poster for their classroom. While this was going on, Mark met with parents from the village to discuss first aid. We also had a session for the elderly. They had fun picking out reading glasses, playing Bingo, coloring, and swatting balloons with flyswatters. You could hear their laughter across the schoolyard. Our construction crew did some touch up painting. Ann also met with several potential scholarship students, we will be giving two scholarships to students from Machakilha. Despite it being the dry season, we had a torrential rainstorm which turned our path into a mud bath. Right before we left the principal, teacher and all the kids had a beautiful sending off presentation. They sang songs and some of the older students gave short speeches. It was heartfelt and a perfect end to our visit there. The muddy trail out of the village made the journey on horseback quite interesting. Hans, Mark and Thomas hiked the five miles and had to stop many time to knock the mud off their boots. After the two hour trek, we loaded up the van and headed back through San Lucas to see the progress on the water project, pick up some crafts, and say goodbye to friends along the road.