Deyra turns 19!

Deyra has lived with us for a month now! It’s been a really fun time for the most part. We did have one incident where she was an hour late when my sister picked her up from school… I kept calling her and telling her to go “right now” and she kept telling me that she was on her way (she was really hanging out with her friends). Needless to say, I was angry and sternly told her that she better never do that again. She almost cried and Kevin made me apologize (even though I didn’t really do anything wrong) and it was all better. She is always very prompt now!

A couple of weeks ago, we took Deyra and one of her friends to a water park for the day. Her friend is a second year student in the same program who is from a town very close to Deyra’s hometown. Neither of them had ever been to a water park before. The night before Deyra had refused to get on a large trampoline because she was scared, but she went down almost all of the slides! I thought that the girls were going to have heart attacks a couple of times but they said that they had a good time. Deyra told us that she never imagined that there could be places like that, not even in her dreams!

Last Friday was Deyra’s birthday and we threw her a party and invited her fellow classmates. I sent an e-mail to the host parents assuming that this would be the best method for getting RSVPs…wrong! Ten RSVPed, seven of those came, and eleven others showed up! Luckily we had tons of food so it didn’t matter. They ate, danced, sang birthday songs, and Deyra got more presents than she ever has in her life! (I may have gone a little overboard…) She got a lot of warm clothes since she does not have any, calling cards, and lots of sweets. We had forgotten how dressed up people in Honduras got for parties, and these kids were the same. It looked like they were going to the prom (my sister said that she could tell which students had already been here a year because they were not as dressed up) and I think they really enjoyed the chance to get dressed up and spend time together outside of school!

The day after the party, Kevin and I went to San Francisco to a Fresno State game and left Deyra at home. Before we left she said that she wanted to do laundry and I had her show me that she knew how to use everything. She called during the game saying that her clothes did not wash and I referred her to my sister who lives next door to us. Laurie fixed the problem for the time being but the breaker blew at some point leaving the clothes in a washer full of water. Deyra had no idea what to do so she just took them out and put them in the dryer. The blown breaker caused the dryer to spin but without heat. When we returned at 1:00 AM, the dryer was still running because it was set to detect dampness, not time! It had probably been running for at least four hours! And her fancy party dress was in there tinted blue because she washed it with dark jeans because she didn’t want to do two loads with a small amount of clothes. It’s amazing the things and knowledge of them that we take for granted!

I was talking to Deyra last week and I asked her what she was told to her about the U.S.: food, culture, what to expect before she arrived. She told me that the coordinators in Nicaragua told her that the U.S. was pretty and the people were nice. They told her nothing about the culture, food, or what to expect. I cannot imagine how scary that must have been for her leaving home for the first time and going to a country that she knew nothing about where she did not speak the language. She is a very brave girl.

Deyra told me that she never imagined that there would be so much stuff. Buildings, roads, food, stores, etc. She’s handling it all very well and is learning English at a rapid pace. Last night I helped her with her homework and she had written two paragraphs in English that I corrected for her. I was impressed at how well she spelled words (I have trouble spelling without spell-check!), and at her vocabulary. Because she knows that we speak Spanish, she tends to talk to us mostly in Spanish so I cannot gage how much she knows. I now know that she knows a lot!









Next up: Deyra goes to the “big trees”, has a car wash, and spends the weekend alone!