May 21, 2009 From Cyril Ross Nursery, Trinidad

I told the kids that I wanted to include a picture of everybody, so their parents would know that they were safe in Trinidad.  As you can see, they are all very sad to be missing their parents and home!  At the moment, I am at Cyril Ross Nursery (the orphanage) with a hard working group.  We are painting, painting, painting!  This will be my last day for a while that I will have any contact with a computer, so you won't hear from me again before next Wednesday.
Beautiful flowers everywhere.  The dry season has been rather wet this year, so everything is green and colorful.  The birds are amazing.  As we sit together for breakfast every morning, we look out over the little town of Tunapuna and watch the clouds roll by.  Pretty wonderful!


Above (possibly), you can see Gustavo and Dan as they work in Madonna's office.  Madonna is the manager and head honcho of the nursery.  She is so happy with her new office!  Then you can see a group painting the wash room--some of our students along with some kids from the nursery.  There is also a picture of Kathryn having her hair "designed" by little Chelsea.  We are not allowed to take any pictures of the beautiful faces of the children.

One of the very talented and artistic girls did Molly's hair one afternoon.  She taught herself to braid like this and did it very quickly.  

We will stop work early today, at about 2:30 for a special event.  There is some kind of big sporting event at the University of the West Indies.  We are calling it the Caribbean Olympics.  Athletes from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, and other countries will compete for 10 days in a variety of contests.  Tonight is the opening ceremony.  We will be the guests of the organizer.  Then we will stay for the first basketball game.  Tomorrow we head to the beach.  On Saturday evening, we will take part in the Astronomy Association's monthly meeting.  Many telescopes will be on the mountain and we will have quite a view.  Needless to say, every day is nothing short of amazing and we are all blessed to be sharing this experience together.  We can't wait for Mike to join us on Saturday night!

I'm sorry that I will be out of touch for a few days.  If you are following this blog, I'll see you on Wednesday--hopefully with news from other groups.  The sign on the wall next to me says "Every Child Deserves to Smile!"