Saturdays

I like how Saturdays begin slowly.  Sulmi usually sleeps until  10 AM giving me a relaxing contemplative two cups of coffee morning to have devotions and plan my sermon before everything starts buzzing. When Solana isn't walking across my computer and trying to lay down directly behind it, she's on my bed, sleeping.  This cat can sleep 22 hours of every day which doesn't help her girth, but she's a cuddler.

Last week I was blessed by Juan who came to help weed my garden (Yes!).  It needed a dramatic overhaul.  He also helped trim the bushes.  I wanted to trim everything so we could put on Christmas lights with a tidy background.  Juan and all of the caneros in Orange Walk have been out of work for two months because the Sugar factory is arguing with the cane farmers union about who gets the profit from the discarded cane pulp (bagasse). It seems clear to me that the farmers sell their cane to the factory and if the factory is "green" enough to learn how to re-use the waste, good for them, but I must be missing something in the details, because the fight continues.  As a result of the fighting, none of the cane has been cut or processed that should have started in October.  All of the caneros are trying to find other work like roadwork.  Juan goes fishing and sells what he catches.  He fishes with a hook and a line....not a net, or pole, reel, or spear.  He just wades out and tosses the line in the water and the pulls it up.  That brings in varying amounts of fish from 5 to 40 which he eats, gives away to family members, or sells.  So it's a win-win...I needed help and he needed a little pocket money to pay the shop bill.  In the meantime I am thinking, why doesn't everyone want to hire this guy? He works so fast!
                                         

One of the great things about Bishop Martin High School is there are a lot of group projects.  I love that Sulmi gets to work closely with several different people from her class.  It's a direct answer to my prayers that she would feel included and not left alone or pushed out of the way because she is deaf.  So often on Saturday afternoons we are working with one of her groups.  One of the groups is 6 Freshman working together to select a science fair project, write it up in a journal, divide the work evenly, do the experiment and display the results.  They've met about 8 times already and the  project is not due until January.  

Recently 6 others met several times to practice the Mestizo dance.  They had so much fun practicing that they begged to not go home when the practicing was over.  It was a GREAT group of kids and they won the competition!

This Saturday she had a creative Spanish project with Carolina.  It's so much fun to see that her friends in her class are children of the parents I am friends with.  I've known Carolina since she was 7.  Wow, if I could hand pick someone for Sulmi to be friends with from her new school, Carolina would be at the top of the list.  She's so calm.  Sulmi kind of messed up part of the project and Carolina said nothing.  Sulmi was frustrated so I made a suggestion how it could be fixed, Carolina very very gently helped to soothe Sulmi's hurt ego and guided Sulmi to fix the picture and then let it go.  She let Sulmi finish fixing it.  In the end it looked fabulous.  After I took Carolina home, Sulmi also commented on how easy she is to get-along-with. We both are sort of the excitable types (smile)...Carolina's pleasant "cool" was amazing to us.