Traveling and more PBJs: Saturday, March 21st.
- 12:35am–boarded San Fran to Houston overnight flight
- 6am–arrived in Houston, but don’t know who any of my fellow group members are.
- 7:15am–it’s only morning, but I’ve already been up 24hrs straight.
- 8:30am–eating peanut butter & jelly sandwich #2.
- 10:30am–met my group, all are nice.
- 10:50am–boarding plane. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m poor…….eating peanut butter & jelly sandwich #3.
By afternoon we arrived at the Hogar. It’s on a compound covering one city block. The Orphanage is completely surrounded by high brick walls, and from the outside it is completely unmarked. There is an armed guard on duty 24/7.
Entrance to the Orphanage. The green gate to the right is always kept closed except when people need in or out of the building. After that there is a second gate that has to opened. The rest of the orphanage is completely surrounded with high brick walls. No one can see in, none of us could see out.
That truck is filled with all of our luggage--mostly items to be donated to the Hogar
Our only glimpse of the outside world
After settling in, we had orientation and gave our donated items to Mother Ivonne. Then played with some of the girls for awhile.
One of the first things I’ve noticed here are the sounds. There are loud booms quite often. Mother Ivonne says they are “firecrackers” (Firecrackers seems sorely inadequate a word. The noise these things make sounds like it would come from the likes of a cannon ball).
We also hear small planes flying overhead rather frequently. All of them are drug planes–headed for Mexico, and eventually, the United States.
At 7pm we had vigil, but I was so exhausted from being up so long I kept nodding off and seeing double.
9pm– thirty-eight lonnnng hours later, I am finally going to bed.
Buenos noches.
