Things have been going well with our community library -- you can check on our blog to see more about it.  We've written about our goal of teaching children a love of reading, but as we've spent time with these kids, we've found so many more things to teach.  We see now that if we can help them to develop their self-esteem, creativity, originality, and problem-solving skills, it will be a big help for their futures. 
 
Many times in the Honduran culture people ridicule what is different, and people often laugh at creative ideas.  This can squash self-esteem and people learn to stick to the status quo.  One example we've observed is that kids are taught that you can only color an object one color and if they do anything else they are laughed at.  Too often they are ashamed of their work and crumple every page and throw it away.    
 
Beyond just reading time, we've also incorporated craft time and puzzle time into the library schedule.  We're trying to teach them to break the coloring "rules" and to think in new ways.  We've created make believe worlds on paper, where trees are made of strange colors and patterns and we told the kids their paper cannot look just like their neighbor's.  Puzzle time seems to be the kid's favorite part of the afternoon.  From the timidity of never having built a puzzle, the kids are now building them faster and faster, gaining confidence and problem-solving skills.
 
The Honduran school year starts next week.  For this year we will continue our two days of library a week, plus teach two days of English classes at our village elementary school, and add a weekly, advanced English class for students from Instituto El Rey.