Day 8: Second Day at Orfanto Jehova-Jirah

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Journal Entry by Matthew Parker

Today we were back in full force at the orphanage. Luckily, those of us who were feeling sick yesterday were doing much better today. The day began with a delicious pancake breakfast at the Alamo Hotel and then a long wait for directions to the orphanage from a Salvadoran Rotaractor. Luckily Otto came to the rescue and guided us to the orphanage.

We arrived at the orphanage ready to work, but unfortunately the contractors were still not there. We played kickball with some of the kids until he arrived and then got right down to work. We had not lowered the ground enough yesterday so we had to dig up about another four inches using the limited supplies we had available to get the task done. With only a few buckets, pick axes and shovels, we moved hundreds of buckets of dirt and rocks from one end of the orphanage to the other. The ground was very hard and rocky, the buckets were very heavy and combined with the extreme temperature we were very hot! Luckily we took many breaks to drink water and Gatorade.

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After a hard days work, we came back to the hotel, took much needed showers and got ready to go to a Rotaract meeting. After getting lost on the way to the meeting, we arrived and were, of course, the first ones there; I think it may take us a while longer to get used to “Salvadoran time”. After the meeting, most of us went back to the hotel while others went grocery shopping to pick up lunch for tomorrow. Those of us who came back to the hotel were very excited when the grocery shoppers came back with ice cream sandwiches for everyone!

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Overall we had a really good day where we worked really hard and accomplished a lot. We also came up with a new group motto, based on one the favourite expression of Lombardo, one of our hosts: “We love rocks… just keeeeeedddiiiinnnggg!”