Progress in the Past Month

It's hard to believe we've been here for 2 and a half months already. The time is absolutely flying by!

This past month has been particularly eventful. For starters, a volunteer group from Stonehill came down a few weeks ago to work here for a week. It was absolutely wonderful to have some familiar faces around here for a week, especially my friend Rachel! In addition to being an absolutely wonderful friend, she's an incredible artist. At one point during the week, she drew a few of my students, and they went crazy over her drawings! They are still talking about them to this day. The rest of the group came to the school at different parts of the week, and they all really connected with the girls. Most groups don't really talk or interact with the girls, but my students really enjoy having visitors and meeting the volunteer groups that come down.

This past week was the second round of exams for my girls. I felt like such a proud mom to all my students because they all did so well! Out of 36 exams, only 2 girls failed. While I was upset about those girls failing, it was a lot fewer than the first round of exams. One of my students is kind of a slacker, and she doesn't seem to try or study that hard. She failed her first exam a month ago, and I had to talk to her mom afterwards and see how we could help improve her scores. I gave this student a study guide for this exam, and told her mom about it so she would study the weekend before the exam. My student told me she studied, but when I asked her review questions the day before, she wasn't getting any of the correct! In fact, I asked her the same question 3 times and she got it wrong every time! You can imagine how nervous and unhopeful I was to grade her exam. Well that girl who seemed to know so little got an 80%! She literally doubled her score from her first exam! (And she finally got that question I asked her 3 times right.) I was so proud that I wrote her name in the book of accomplishments. She hugged me 3 times when I told her how well she did. It's the little moments like these that have made my time here so special.

It was a little sad today after exams ended today, because I had to say goodbye to the girls for a whole week! We all have vacation this week, and while I'll miss them, I'm pretty excited for this week. Alex and I are leaving for Copán tomorrow to see the Mayan ruins, and enjoy some much needed rest and relaxation. Say a little prayer for us for safe travels!