A day at the Instituto Technico Santa Maria

This morning Raul took us on a field trip some distance away from Tegucigalpa. The drive took us over mountains and through areas that gave us a glimpse of just how different life here in Honduras can be. We saw vistas of humble homes stacked seemingly one on top of the other as far as the eye can see.

Our destination was another El Hogar school campus called the Instituto Technico Santa Maria. This school is for older boys who have graduated from the El Hogar elementary school and who wish to learn a technical trade which will help them to eventually find a rewarding job. I was quite impressed with the size and scope of the campus, and the quality of the education the boys are receiving here.

The school has dorms, classrooms, a beautiful new chapel, basketball court, and technical classrooms covering woodworking, metalworking, electrical repair, etc.

Here we see Raul on the left admiring the students' handiwork in the woodworking shop. We got a thorough tour of all the other shops as well, and the boys were all happily working away (under the watchful eye of adult supervisors):

We found out that one other important skill the boys learn is how to wash their own clothes! And they do it the traditional way:

After our tour, we had a break for lunch at the cafeteria where the students take their meals:

We were served the same food that the boys also ate:

And yes, that is a banana floating in the steaming hot soup, along with a bony piece of an animal which we think was a cow. Oddly enough, cooked bananas in soup taste almost exactly like potatoes!

After returning to Tegucigalpa we donned our work clothes and continued yesterday´s job of shoveling and transporting sand. I forgot to take photos, so just take a look at the blog entry I wrote yesterday and imagine two or three more hours of the same.

This evening after dinner, Tara and I played "hide and seek" with Alexis, who started the game innocently enough by having me count to 51. Soon I found out that this version of the game devolves into a hard-fought game of tag, cleverly designed to leave tired adults sweating and panting for breath. Alexis had pity on me and eventually allowed me to tag him, at which point I had had enough and went to watch the boys play soccer. Diane and Lori jumped in and played like crazy - we'll see if any of us can still walk tomorrow!

That's all for tonight,

- Mark