New Kiddos...Israel, Nick, Genesis, Maria

While our kindergarten class was out having a play-break last Friday, 3 new kids walked in through the big front gate with their mom and a social worker. A few hours later, they were admitted into the orphanage. They are siblings: 8-year-old twins Nick and Genesis and their older brother Israel who turned 11 just a few days ago. After 2-year-old Erica came in a few weeks ago we talked about how it would be a neat experience to see some older children come in. While it has been really interesting and "neat" its also been very hard to see. Just thinking about what these kids must be feeling and experiencing is sad. But, Genesis and Nick seemed excited about being here right away and were eager to meet all of the kids and staff during the past couple days. They made friends quickly and seemed pretty comfortable with the huge change in their life. Israel is quieter and has some behavior problems, but overall is a good kid. Genesis is beautiful and loves to run and be chased! The other day she taught us her version of 'freeze tag' using actions to explain the rules, after we reminded her a billion times that we couldn't understand her because we don't speak Spanish. Nick is extremely affectionate. A few nights ago I was playing a little peek-a-boo game with Yen, 3-years-old and when Yen hopped off my lap, Nick jumped right on and wanted to play the same game. He gave me tons of hugs and kisses and wanted to be held almost like a baby. Throughout the past couple days/nights he'll play happily with his friends but will stop literally every few minutes to come over to give and receive affection. He is starved for love.

We have been working as house moms in Nick and Israel's house for the past couple days. Both boys ask when we are going to eat at least once every 20 minutes. Soon after a meal they will start asking when the next meal is. They usually want more food after they have finished their portion too. There had been some little things that you could tell were hard for them about moving here, but it all came crashing down on Nick.

A few nights ago right after showers Nick was sitting in the family room in his cassita. Arielle went over to him to tell him it was dinner time and saw he was crying quietly to himself. He said he didn't want to eat dinner so we let him just have some space for a few minutes. In a couple minutes I went and picked him up, and held him close like he likes to be held. He sobbed in my lap for a while and the other children told me he wanted to go to his house. He had told me that earlier too. I asked him in English if he missed his 'mama' and he broke down even harder, not understanding the question I had asked, but just hearing the word 'mama'. He cried and cried and just wanted to be held for a long time. He wouldn't talk or eat, just wanted to sob in my arms. I could have cried right there with him, but I wanted to help him. The other boys in his saw he was more than just a little upset and started to notice. The older, "cooler" boys came over and gave him a nice pat on the back and said some nice words to him. The 2 little guys came and rubbed his head the way I was. It was like Nick hit the wall where the orphanage stopped seeming like fun summer camp and he wanted to go home. It was one of the saddest things you could ever see.

It was really a moment where we realized these boys are all each other has. They have to be like family to one another and take care of each other. As much as they fight and yell and bug each other, they can relate to one another and know what it's like to be lonely and probably pretty desparate for your mom and dad. Both Arielle and I were super happy that we were able to be there on Nick's first hard night. While the house moms are very loving and caring, they have so much work to do and deal with this a lot. We were happy Nick could just get time to be sad and be held and loved.

Fortunately, in a little while Nick decided he could try some dinner. He ate a tiny bit and then I asked if he wanted a special treat...he chose an orange. When the 2 little guys saw that Nick got an orange they wanted one too of course. The children don't eat snacks after dinner, but Nick handed out pieces to anyone who wanted one. 10 minutes after the orange, he was out playing Spiderman with the other guys.

Just imagining the situation these children are in is sad. Seeing it is even more sad. And holding kids when they realize they have it bad is the worst. Please pray for Nick and his sibs.

We also have another new 8-year-old girl who came in on Saturday morning. She and Genesis are instant best friends. She was very shy at first but is sweet and affectionate. Her name is Maria and she's so lovable.

We've been busy being house moms, to give the madres here a break, and have a girls house again tonight. We are having a popcorn, pajama and peanut butter party in 10 minutes!

Happy 12th Birthday Josue!

On Friday night we were invited to a party in one of the boys' houses to celebrate Josue's 12th birthday. We weren't really sure what to expect since they haven't celebrated a birthday since we've been here, but it turned out to be so much fun! We walked in to the livingroom of their house and chairs had been set up along all of the walls and most of the boys (there are 12 boys in that house!) were already sitting patiently, waiting for the party to begin. It didn't start until 8 pm, which is late for them, so it was even fun for them to be able to still be up! Some of Josue's friends from the other houses were also invited to come to the party. There was a table set up (you can see it in one of the pictures) with a huge cake, popcorn, pop, and these really good caramel-filled cookie things, and music playing. The party started with Hugo, the house dad, playing the guitar and all the kids singing along. We (yes, the two of us were enthusiastic participants) played some fun party games including an alternative form of musical chairs where the girls stand in a line and are the "chairs" and the boys had to run around all of us and loop their arms through ours when the music stops. We then switched spots and let the boys be the "chairs". Another highlight was when Hugo had Josue sit in a chair, put his coat over Josue, and then Hugo pretended to be his arms. Everyone thought it was so funny! We had potatoes with spicy sauce for dinner, followed by a few handfuls of popcorn and some of the caramel cookies, and then topped off the night with a big piece of cake! The spicy sauce was SUPER spicy and all the kids had to wave their hand in front of their mouth and shout out "pica, pica" (hot, hot) as they put each bite in their mouth. It must have been extra spicy for little Edwin, age 5, because soon after his first bite he had sweat actually dripping off his face! He must have enjoyed it though because he ate his entire plate! The older girls had all made home-made cards for Josue and it was so sweet to watch him smile as he read all of them and opened the pieces of candy they had individually wrapped for him. They really are all such good friends and it is always fun to see them do special little things for one another. We also couldn't get enough of watching Sarita, their house mom, beaming throughout the entire party. She must have been so happy to be celebrating the birthday of her oldest boy and to see all the boys having such a good time. It was such a fun night and we are so glad we got to be a part of it!

Zuleica

Zuleica is the youngest child here. She is about 16-months-old and has been at the orphanage for just over 2 months. When she first got here she wouldn't smile and was very lethargic. She doesn't stand or walk and still has no desire to learn. She is such a good, sweet baby and it is so sad sometimes because she is content to sit in her bed or on a chair for literally hours and hours. She doesn't cry for attention or toys and isn't very interactive. Zuleica was severely abused by her drug addicted father and her life at "home" was really rough. It is very obvious that she has not had the love and security that all babies need.

In the month that we have been here we have seen Zuleica come a long way. She smiles a little sometimes and will reach up her arms to be held. She is comfortable with us and lets us hold her for long periods and sits happily in a chair or playing with small toys during kindergarten. She loves to eat and will grunt for food when she sees it. She is a very lovable girl and needs lots of extra affection! We love her so incredibly much and want her to learn to trust and love so she can start a new happy life.

When Zuleica arrived at the orphanage a couple months ago she joined her 4 half-bio siblings: Karina; 9-years-old, Araceli; 6-years-old, Dani; 5-years-old, and Yen; 3-years-old (all different fathers). The 4 older ones have been here for at least 3 years now. Although the 5 sibs don't all live in the same house, they know they are family and are so caring and sweet to one another. Zuleica now lives with an amazing house-mom, Rocio. Rocio is constantly loving on Zuleica and is always fussing over her and teasing her and kissing her. Zuleica also has 7 other girls in her house who are eager to help out as 'little moms.' Zuleica is in a great place now, with her family, and she will continue to get better, we are sure of it.

Update on Erica

We have had Erica for a week now. We introduced her a few entries back and explained that she was a very sad, scared little girl who was dropped off at the orphanage by her mother. She has stayed that way all week. She is in our kindergarten class and spends most of the 3.5 hours in a puddle of tears (see the first 2 pics above). Sometimes she can compose herself, but we are careful then not to look at her because if she notices we are looking at her, she may remember to be sad again. It breaks your heart to hear her crying so much and see how upset she gets about just about everything. How can you blame her though? Her whole world has just been turned upside down...for the better I am sure, but still, at 2-years-old she wants her mommy, no matter how bad her situation was.

We have been really gentle with her. Letting her do her own thing in class, playing with the toys she wants, when she wants to. It is hard to get her involved in toys or anything at first, but when she does calm down a bit, she likes the big duplo blocks. Anytime me or Arielle leave the room, she bursts into tears. Anytime our whole class would leave the room, she would burst into tears. We try to comfort her and hold her as much as we can, while still having little lessons for our other "students."

Today though Erica had a breakthrough (see the last 3 pics above)! We played outside with sidewalk chalk and ran around the yard and something just must have felt right within her because she smiled...a lot! She laughed and played and even ran a little too. She let us tease her a little and even ventured around the yard by herself, following the bigger boys. We are so proud of her and had to keep saying, "look at Erica!" during the morning as she kept making the cutest smiles.

Erica has had to deal with so much change and it hurts even thinking about some of the loss she is continuing to go through. We are just hoping that she can have happier times each day as she develops trust and security here at the orphanage. She's a sweet girl and we know that as she gets more comfortable she will have some spunk in her too. We love her lots already and are excited to watch her continue to grow.

Yo Mama!

Yum Yum Double Up Yum! We just ate an entire bag of Peruvian brand munchies and it was absolutely delicious.

Anyways we have had a very interesting experience as our first day of being HOUSE MOMS! Yulissa who is a madre in one of the boys' houses asked us a few days ago if we could take over for her 1 day a week so she could have some time off. We were pumped! We are always up for digging right in. We were really excited and even bought some ingredients for some treats to make with the boys. We usually have to have something extra special because we like to be really fun "tias."

We started our day at 9:00 but only had 2 kids because the rest went to churchski. Lazaro (whom we named Laz or Lazzy) and Zuleica (Zu) played with us for a while until the rest of the guys came back. While everyone else had to stay inside and change and get ready for lunch, we let our boys change quickly and play outside. After lunch we washed the dishes (that was supposed to be the boys' job, but of course they wouldn't tell us because we were happy to do them).

After lunch we played and then went into the kitchen to whip up some cocoa krispie bars with chin chins (Peruvian imitation M&M's) with all the guys. They were beyond excited to help dump the ingredients in the pan and LOVED pushing it around and adding the chin chins onto the top. They all played outside on bikes and with chalk while we waited for a program to begin at 4:00. The YWAM mission team who is here right now from Minnesota put on a puppet show, skit, games program for all of the kids. They did a great job and the kids loved it, and also loved having cake and pop with it. Of course there was lots more playing after dinner, even though lots of the the other houses had to sit nicely and wait inside for their meal. We were informed that the children who are smaller shouldn't eat dinner because they had had cake and pop and if they did eat dinner they would barf. We thought, "what the heck?! You don't replace a meal with cake...they still need nutrition." Anywho our little guys ended up eating a tiny bowl of soup (that was a bit of foreshadowing).

Bedtime! Yikes! This was a disaster. Imagine this scene. It is 7:30, time to get in bed. 8 boys were running around their house screaming. Soup was flying everywhere, clothes needed to be changed because of spills, some refused to eat at a normal pace, etc. "Hey guys, can you show me where the toothpaste is for you to brush teeth?" No they can't. A: They don't speak English and B. They want to be silly because mom's away and they had babysitters. When we finally got them all showered, jammied, and had their teeth brushed the real chaos began. The giggling and laughing and screaming and running brought us right back to Uganda when we would put the 25 toddlers to bed. The boys thought it was hilarous to get in the wrong beds, share beds, hide, steal each others blankets, etc. Meanwhile our littlest ones were exhausted from the big day and were crying from tiredness. We hate having to yell, especially when what we say isn't understood, but we finally got the point accross and got everyone in bed. Ahhh. Time for us to have some dinner. We go to the house to eat dinner and Rachel returns in just a few minutes to find the guys sitting out in the family room, just casually hangin out. I laughed it off and helped them back into bed, while Italo tried to tell me something. Although he is 8-years-old he has a super hard time talking so I thought maybe he just wanted to be comforted. No, he was telling me that Pierro was hiding under the bunkbeds. Pierro got a look of terror when I discovered he was hiding, but I reassured him it was okay and that I knew he was just having fun. I helped him back into bed and found Laz (who is 10-years-old, special needs) crawling around on the floor. The boys must have moved his gate and thought it was funny to get him down. At this point, kids in another room were up. AHHHHHHHH! As if things couldn't get worse, the house mom upstairs in one of the girls houses needed to go to the doctor with one of the girls because, surprise, she threw up (they go to the doctor for everything here!). She told us in a flurry of Spanish that we needed to watch the girls and put them to bed too. Oh boy. So we go up there and find that lots of the girls are thinking its funny to pretend to throw up because they had just seen someone do it. They are all crazy hysterical and cracking up! We try to get there dinner stuff cleaned up, get them into pajamas, have them brush teeth, and get them in the correct bed. Meanwhile there is banging and laughing going on downstairs in our boys house. The story goes on and on...we ran back and forth, taking turns running up and down, for the next hour or so. Finally the boys calmed down and slept and guess what? Our house was the first one sleeping! As we were relaxing in the boys' family room one of the girls from upstairs delivered a balloon message to us. Written with marker on a balloon, it said, "tia arielle and tia raquel...and then some things in Spanish." We are not sure what it said...it could have been an apology balloon for not listening or a hate message they thought would be funny because they knew we wouldn't be about to understand it, but we are convinced it was a letter of love and appreciation. The night was not over though. Arielle had just turned off the light to go to bed when she heard a little voice, "tia? tiaaaaa?" Turns out Yen, 3-years-old had puked. That was fun and she was up for the next bit of night cleaning that up and comforting the little guy.

We both got up at 5:30, got the boys into their school uniforms, fed them breakfast, packed their bags and sent them off to school. We cleaned the house, dressed our pre-schoolers and started our own kindergarten class. It was a LONG day to say the least.

I guess though, when it's all said and done, these boys were good. We can't expect them to behave perfectly. They are just kids who want to have fun and we know that it's a thrill to have someone else taking care of them. Although it made it a little difficult for us, we can both sit here and say we are happy with how it went. We're glad the boys got some laughs and had some "regular kid" fun. They deserve it. We work again next Saturday....we'll let you know how that one goes.

Girls' Day Out!

Hi everyone! Yesterday we spent most of the day hanging out with five of the oldest girls here- Yamelit, Nancy, Caroline, Maria, and Rocio. We got all of them together right after lunch and headed out to the main road to catch a city bus into town. They all had spent extra time getting ready, were wearing some of their nicest clothes, and most of them chose to bring along a "purse", some of their purses simply being small gift bags! The first stop of the day was the grocery store. When we talked to them a few days earlier, they were the most insistent on wanting to go here. We weren't really sure why the grocery store was such a big deal, but as soon as we got in the doors, they all went wild! They were running up and down all the aisles, throwing things into the basket and then changing their minds every 30 seconds. There were so many choices for them and everything looked so good! It took all of them a good 25 minutes to make some very hard decisions and finally each decide on their own drink, salty snack, candy, and pack of gum. Of course, these 25 minutes were also full of laughter, squeals, and shouts from all over the store when someone discovered yet another display of something tasty! The girls made some great choices including Peruvian cheetos, Fanta, sour Skittles, and M&Ms. Rocio made the most unique choice of all when she swapped her cheetos out for a bag of peanuts and raisins. Rachel and I couldn't believe that a child would choose such a healthy snack over anything else in the store and assumed she didn't really know what it was. But, she was so excited about them and assured us she was well aware of her choice! We just had to laugh! After another 10 minutes of playing in a McDonald's type play area, we hopped into a cab (yes, all five girls and the two of us fit just fine in a normal taxi!) and headed over to the movie theater. The girls decided to see "Mr. Bean's Vacation". They were so excited to get in the theater and choose their seats and of course all had to show us how they could get "stuck" in their seat when the bottoms folded up. Rachel and I got really worried when the previews were in English with just Spanish subtitles, but thankfully the movie itself was in Spanish. The girls happily munched on their treats in the row behind us and giggled the whole time. Nancy, the youngest in the group, sat up in the row with us and was so excited to be at the movie that she barely touched her snacks! I asked her a few times is she was going to eat them but she simply looked at me with a big smile on her face and said she was going to eat them later. After the movie, our newest Peruvian friend, Augusto (we met him last weekend when he came to our rescue and brought us and the boys to Huanchaco), met us outside the theater and took us to Rocky's. The girls spent some time playing the video games and climbing around the playground. They also had fun watching a little girl's first birthday party that was going on in a back room. It was one of the most elaborate first birthday parties we had ever seen! There were tons of decorations, massive cakes, and two characters dressed as Minnie Mouse and a Disney princess. There was also a Spiderman birthday party going on with, of course, Spiderman himself. Apparently birthdays are a big deal here! We thought the girls would hardly have an appetite since they had eaten so much at the movie, but they all happily chowed down on chicken, fries, and Inca Cola. Again, Augusto was a welcome guest at our table. To top off the night, there was a face painter there and so before we left, all of the girls had their faces painted, complete with glittery magenta lips! The staff at Rocky's had all five girls and the two of us go stand by a little waterfall outside and get our picture taken. We all had such a good time! Although they were all very thankful, Nancy couldn't seem to tell us enough how much fun she was having and how thankful she was. Countless times throughout the day she came up to one of us, grabbed our hand or put her arms around us, and repeated over and over "thank you, thank you" in English. I don't think she stopped smiling the whole time! It was so good to spend some extra time with these girls and shower them with extra attention and special treats!

We have finally gotten it across to most of the kids that EVERYONE will have a turn to go on a special outing with us, they just have to be patient! So, the phrase we hear the most around here lately is "Tia, otro sabado?", which means "Another Saturday?", because this is what we always tell them when they ask if they will get a turn. We reassure them that they will also get a turn and they skip away smiling. We love these kids so much and love every moment we get to spend with them!

Erica

This is little Erica. While our kindergarten class was out for a break yesterday, she came running out of the back kitchen door, crying; we had no idea who she was. She seemed helpless and wanted to be held. She is 2-years-old and cried out, "mommy!" as we tried to calm her down. It was such a sad scene. We found out in the little Spanish that we know that she is the newest addition to the orphanage. She was a VERY sad girl yesterday and seemed absolutly distraught with the situation. She will be part of our kindergarten class and came to join us yesterday for a bit after she had been cleaned up. She seems to have a severe burn scar on one of her hands and wrist, but we are unsure of her story. She needs a lot of love and comfort and will get that here. We are excited to spend time with her and give her lots of love.

Thank you and Kindergarten Update

Hey guys! First, thank you soooo much to everyone who has contributed to our pizza party! We are so thrilled that it is going to work out and we appreciate your help so much. God has blessed us in so many ways throughout this year and we are reminded again how blessed we are to have family and friends who are so supportive of us! The party will be next Friday and we'll be sure to take pics and let everyone know how it goes.

We've been busy with kindergarten this week! On Monday we got to visit a Peruvian kindergarten to "observe" and help out for 3 hours. We were able to get lots of ideas for our own class and we now even have workbooks for the children and special notebooks for little assignments each day. We did a week long theme of "All About Me" this week and focused on a different little topic each day. The 3 bigger boys are shown posing with their lifesize cutouts of themselves. They added the faces themselves when we learned about the face, decorated the shoes, shirts and pants when we learned about clothes, and added traced cutouts of their hands when we learned about different body parts. Everyone also had a great time making hand and footprints with blue paint. Today we learned about ways to move our bodies and made little versions of oursleves with craft sticks and put them on a poster we all decorated according to where we wanted to "play" on the poster. The two little painters, who are painting "zapatos" (shoes) in the pictures are our youngest students, Jose David and Zuleica. We are also continuing to work on colors and shapes everyday and Yen and Chito seem to be getting better everyday. Both "tias" (us according to the kids or aunties in Spanish) are LOVING being teachers!!! Next week..."On the Farm!"

Pizza Party...?

Although it's always fun to do things with small groups of kids, it's also nice to be able to do something with all of them at the same time, while at the same time being able to include their house moms and the rest of the staff that work so hard to keep this place running and love these children unconditionally. It's nearly impossible for this group of 55+ people to go somewhere at the same time, so we thought it would be fun to "sponsor" a few events right here at the alburgue. We really want to have a pizza party for all of the kids and staff in the next week or so. The kids get so excited at the mere mention of the word pizza and we know they would absolutely love a Friday night full of pizza, pop, music, and just plain fun! As we've been gone now for almost 7 months and are running low on funds due to our time in Uganda and Haiti, we know that a pizza party of this size might not be possible but we also know how much it would mean to everyone here. If anyone who reads our blog would like to contribute, even if it's just a few dollars, to the pizza party please contact us by email (arielle.rynerson@gmail.com or fixrachel@gmail.com). We would be so grateful and so will the children here in Peru.

Sidewalk Chalk

We did sidewalk chalk with the girls a few days ago and it was adorable to see how excited even the oldest ones got over a big bucket of chalk. We all colored into the evening and the girls spent lots of their time pairing up boys and girls from the orphanage into couples. A few of them even told us about their crushes at school or who likes who here at the orphanage. Their last project was a big traced picture of Arielle's body. She layed on the ground while Yamelit (pictured with Rachel) traced around her body. Everyone then helped to color her in. It was really fun to spend time with just the girls and get to know them more.

The coolest day ever!

Yesterday we took 3 of the older boys out for a day of fun. When we talked to Josue, Abraham, and Arnold the night before they had decided they wanted to go to a movie, eat pizza and have ice cream. They could barely stand their excitement and smiled the whole time and kept looking at each other while we were trying to plan for the day. When we woke up they were all dressed up in nice clothes and ready to go. We took a bus into town which was an interesting experience because we have only been on the buses here once, and that was with a staff member. We didn't really know when to get off for the center of town so we had to ask people in our extremely broken Spanish to tell us when to get off. When we did get off we realized we needed to stop at the bank because we needed Soles to spend for the day. The ATM wouldn't take our cards and you had to have your passport to convert from dollars. Whoops. Luckily we went to another bank which had a different ATM and that worked. To keep the boys busy during this time we got them each some Cheetos. We were all excited and thought the day would be smooth sailing from there on out, but when we walked up to the movie theater we found out movies didn't start showing until 4:00. It was 11:00 in the morning. We decided to go to a restaurant called Rocky's that has games and a playground and things like that, but when we got there we discovered it wasn't really open yet. We were pretty much at a loss at this point and felt like we were really going to let the boys down. They were all so sweet about everything and just went with the flow, and we were just afraid they weren't going to have a good day. We gave them money for video games and they kept busy for a bit while we thought of what we could do. We went up to a little information booth at Rocky's and asked the people behind the counter if they spoke English...of course they didn't, not many people here do. But...just as we were asking, a missionary family happened to walk in! The best part...they were from Minnesota...Shoreview! (That's where Rachel is from.) They told us to bring our kids to this touristy beach area that had lots of cool things to look at and some playground stuff to play on. They called their favorite taxi driver for us and he came to get us. Augusto then drove us to Juanchaco and we got out at the beach. It was beautiful! Lots of long straw boats and surfers and a big long pier where we took the boys out. We bought them "fishing equipment" which was a piece of wood with string and sand crabs for bait. The boys fished for a while and Abraham caught 2 fish at once which was a big hit with all of the boys. We had to kind of beg Abraham and Josue to come off the pier to eat lunch because Arnold was so hungry. The boys really wanted pizza so we had Augusto drive us around a bit to find a pizza place. FYI pizza is only served at night in Peru, so we went to this cute restaurant and got to eat outside right by the beach. The boys saw sunglasses as we were getting out of the cab and we let them each pick out a pair to buy. They were so excited and thought they looked really cool. We sat down to lunch, which was probably the nicest restaurant they had ever been to, since everyone kept telling us the restuarants in Juanchaco were soooo expensive, and we looked through the menus. Abraham picked something right away and Josue immediately told him he couldn't have it because it was too expensive. We reassured all of them they could order whatever they wanted because it was their special day, but they were still so shy about asking for anything expensive (the most expensive thing on the menu was probably about $8). They all decided on chicken, fries, and salad with lemonade. When the food came out the first thing they did was make an extra plate for our cab driver, Augusto. It was so sweet! They went and got him and invited him to come and sit with us. The boys all ate their meals and then in true middle school fashion dumped salt and sauces all over their leftovers while they pretended to like it. It was 4:00 by the time we got back to the orphanage and the boys were obviously exhausted. Josue, 12, fell asleep for most of the ride home. When we got back they all wore their new sunglasses in proudly and were fired up about their outing. They all thanked us, and Josue, the oldest came and gave us huge hugs, squeezing us tight and kisses and said "thank you very much!" in english. Later, he had his arms around Arielle and repeated over and over again "thank you, thank you" for the glasses and everything. He said he had the best day!

These boys are so incedibly sweet and deserve to have special days so much more than they get to have them. Even though they are older, they wanted to hold our hands and put their arms around us and be near us all day. They were so thankful for the fun they had and were so cute. We all had a blast together and joked and laughed a lot even though we have kind of a big language barrier. It was such a great day and we were so happy to spend it with 3 of the coolest kids ever.

Under the Sea Day!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Hi everyone! We have now officially been here at the alburgue (which means orphanage in Spanish) for 1 week now and I was just telling Rachel last night how it has already come to feel very much like home. On Monday morning we had a meeting with Liz, the social worker here, about what we would be doing during our time here. She informed us that we would be setting up and running "kindergarten" for the 5 youngest children here every morning from 8:30-12, and then doing some language therapy with 5 of the older children who need extra help with their speech in the afternoon. We were excited to have such concrete tasks to do every day, and quickly got to work setting up our classroom, making name tags for their little tables, and making lesson plans for our class. We were even able to go into town Monday afternoon and get some art suppliles and traditional classroom posters, including colors, numbers, the alphabet, and even modes of transportation! We decided that each day would have a theme, and our lesson, art projects, and books would center around that theme. Since everyone in our class is so young- Yen (3), Chito (3), Jhonatan (2), Jose David (22 months), and Zuleica (16 months)- we have to keep our themes and projects EXTREMELY simple and allow lots of time for just playing. Our first day of class was Tuesday and the theme was Colors. We had lots of fun learning all the different colors in Spanish, reading a story about a red rhinoceros, playing with different colored balls, and coloring. There was also lots of time for music and dancing, legos, puzzles, running around outside, and just being silly! All of the kids did so well and it was a great first day! Today's theme was "Little Chefs" and we kept the kids busy making slices of felt pizza (Yen and Jhonatan are proudly showing their slices off above), decorating and gluing together triple scoop ice cream cones, and coloring pictures that had different kinds of food on them. We also spent time working on numbers and going over the colors again, and the older 3 boys are definitely starting to get the hang of them! We are excited that we have the opportunity to spend so much time with these 5 children and hopefully teach them something. It's a little funny when we're planning the next day's lesson because in addition to coming up with a theme, planning activities, and getting everything ready, we also have to spend time looking up the key words for the lesson in the Spanish-English dictionary we have permanently borrowed from the library here! Although we're learning a few new words every day and our Spanish is slowly getting a little better, it is still pretty interesting trying to teach a class or have a conversation with an older child when they have no idea what you're saying. We have gotten good at using a few key phrases, using hand gestures, and when all else fails, getting a good laugh with the kids over the fact that sometimes we have absolutely no idea what the other is trying to say!

Here at the alburgue there is a strong emphasis on education, which is great. Everyday when the children are done with lunch, they all spend the rest of the afternoon working on homework, lots of times doing it one-on-one with a house mom or a student volunteer. It is during this time that we do language therapy with some of the children. We work with them one-on-one and practice making different sounds and forming different words. We are still learning each child's abilities and will hopefully be able to come up with some exercises that help their specific needs. When they are done with their homework, they can play until dinner. This is our favorite part of the day because it is when we get to play soccer with the older boys. Although there are always some welcome additions, we can always count on Abrahm, Josue, Jesus, and Kevin Arnold to come play and give us a good workout! They are all so good! Yesterday we even had 2 of the staff members, Elias and Hugo, join us for a little while. We always have so much fun and it's something we can do with the kids that doesn't require us to speak the same language! Last night we were also able to meet up with Liz and some of her friends and go see a movie. It was our first time taking the bus into town but luckily Elias, the driver for the alburgue, was with us to help us get on (you have to do it super quick because the bus doesn't even come to a full stop!) and let us know when to get off. The bus is the most common and cheapest way to get around so I'm sure we'll be taking it quite often over the next 6 weeks. We were surprised to learn that the movie was in English with Spanish subtitles (we were planning on just not understanding the entire thing), and even more surprised to walk into the theater and have it look not that much different from a theater back home! After the movie, we went to a street vendor "cafe" and got something to eat. It was fun to get out and see Trujillo at night, and it's always fun to meet Peruvians and learn more about the people and culture here.

Ciao!

Pictures!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! This morning we woke up and went to church with the children. They go to a church that is about 45 minutes away and all of them get in their bus together to get there. We sat in with Sunday School with them and sang lots of songs, all in Spanish of course. The kids were soooo thrilled when we got home and started hiding eggs for an Easter egg hunt. We brought candy and plastic eggs that we bought in Miami and hid them all over the property this afternoon. The children were so excited to see that we were setting up a game for them, but couldn't contain themselves when they found out there was actually candy inside the eggs. We had to remind lots of girls to stay inside their house for just a few more minutes and not to peek! When it was finally time to seach the kids went nuts and went tearing accross the lawn picking up eggs. Some of the older children found lots of them right away, but we made sure that everyone got an equal amount of candy and the big kids were happy to help the littler ones. Some of the older boys, especially Josue, got really excited about finding ones we had hidden up high in window frames and had to show us again and again how they jumped up to get them. Most of the kids wanted to eat their candy immediately, but Vanesa informed us that she was going to save hers and bring it to school tomorrow. Chito (the little guy on Arielle's lap, age 3) finished one of his eggs and was amazed to find out the other he was holding had candy in it as well. The oldest girl, Yamelit, made sure everyone said, "gracias," and even counted "uno, dos, tres," so everyone could yell it together. After the egg hunt the kids found ways to entertain themselves with their plastic eggs, like filling them with rocks and making shakers or filling them with water to dump over their heads. They all had a blast and were so cute!

You might be thinking, "what did we have for Easter lunch?" Answer: chickenfeet soup. Yes, there were whole chicken feet in there, claws and everything.

You might also wonder, "well what about Easter dinner?" Answer: chickenfeet soup.

We have been spending most of our afternoons on the big open lawn playing soccer with the kids. Yesterday we played for hours with Jesus, Abraham, Jhonatan and Kevin Arnold (whom we call KA) and the second we got off the church bus Jesus, age-10 was asking us when we would be ready to play again today. Today we got a huge game going, boys against girls. About 20 kids were out there with us, and although there were more girls than boys I think the boys still beat us. The children are really good at soccer here! The boys are so fast and have such control and love when we challenge them, trying to get the ball from them. We have to work super hard, but can sometimes do it and they usually fall to the ground laughing because we sometimes have to push them around a bit for fun. The girls love to play too, although aren't quite as good, except Maria, 11, who is awesome! Our goalie today was Rocio, 12, and she was cracking us up because everytime she would stop the ball she would kick it right back to the boy who had just shot it at her. She got pretty good throughout the time and was going all out at the end, making saves where the ball would slam against her and then falling onto her knees laughing! We ran around as hard as we could and spent every extra bit of energy cheering for the kids and encouraging them for whatever they did with the ball, whether it was good or just a "good try."

Some of the littler boys, Chito, Dani, and Abel (3-5) are really into pretending to be super heros. We spent part of the evening in their cassita yesterday and they jumped off the couch over and over again yelling out, "speeder mon, super mon, pow-where ranger!" They are adorable!

We know all the kids now, and can call all of them by name! This is exciting for us, and we are excited to get to know each one more and more throughout the next several weeks.

Tomorrow we will get a schedule of what we will be doing here. This is good because the children are off of their Easter Holiday breaks and will return to school. The littler ones will be here, but we will also be given specific jobs to work on. We'll let you know what our days will look like.

About Hogar de Esperanza

Hi! We have had another really great day in Peru and have some time to write a little bit about what it's like here. This orphanage is called Hogar de Esperanza and is in Trujillo, Peru. It is home to 34 children ages 1-13. Some of them came in as babies, while others came in when they were older. All of them come here to escape abuse or street life or have been abandoned. These kids have had really difficult pasts and it's hard to imagine some of the things they have seen and endured. But...they are wonderful, sweet, incredibly beautiful, fun kids! Hogar de Esperanza splits up the kids into different "cassitas" or family homes. There are 4 different cassitas, 2 for boys and 2 for girls. Each home has a "madre" or mom that takes care of them all the time. The children do everything with their cassita, eat, sleep, bathe, etc. It is so cute to see the family groups sitting around the dinner table for meals! Each cassita has several bedrooms that the children share. The children go to school at either a Christian school in town, or a school right here on the property that is more for those who need extra help or who didn't get to go to school before coming to the orphanage. So far we are incredibly impressed by the way things are done around here. The family groups are wonderful and when you enter into them they really do feel like a home. The children also get lots of time to play with the others who aren't in their cassita and can visit other houses as they please. The madres are so warm and friendly and we have loved meeting each one of them! They seem to take such great care of the children and obviously really love them. The atmosphere around here is so upbeat and everyone seems really happy! It is wonderful.
Now about the kids themselves...we are in love already! We didn't really know what it would be like to deal with older kids, especially when we can't communicate with each other through speaking, but it has been really great! They are so full of affection and hugs and kisses and are eager to run up to us when they see us coming. We are so used to changing diapers, feeding babies, and comforting crying infants that it was strange to not have to do any of that. We miss our babies sooo much, but it has been really great to work with older kids and we know we will learn so much from this experience. This afternoon we played a big game of basketball outside with Fiorella, Nancy, Samir, Jesus, Abraham, Kevin, and Maria and had a blast running around getting super into it. We played all sorts of games this evening with the girls and did hair in one of the cassitas. These kids are so much fun and sweet and incredible! We are so excited to get to know them more and to be able to spend lots of time with them!

Miami and Lima

Hola!

That's right, we are in Peru!!! It's AWESOME, but first, we'll tell you about our break in Miami. So...we get to our hotel and are exhausted and super excited about watching TV- those of you who know us know that we love TV- and we flop down on the bed and turn on the TV only to find out...NO MTV! We were beyond bummed out, so we did the obvious thing. Called to the front desk, asked where the MTV was, and had to move hotels. We ended up staying at kind of a shady place, that was actually okay in the end, and got to watch all the MTV we wanted. We also enjoyed getting smoothies, going to Subway, and spending lots of time on the main strip in Miami. On Monday we rented a beach buggy scooter and drove all around South Beach in it. It was this little yellow, open-top kind of go-kart thing and it was a blast!! We felt weird about spending so much money on food and hotels and just stuff in general, but agreed we really needed this break. We were able to rest a lot and feel a lot more ready for this next part of our journey. Now onto Peru!

We flew out of Miami at 3:30am (after a 2 hour delay which included boarding and switching planes) and arrived in Lima at about 8:30am. Our flight to Trujillo didn't leave until 7:45 pm, so we had the whole day to hang out. We ended up taking a cab into the center of Lima which was this beautiful European style main plaza. It was gorgeous! There is a giant fountain in the middle of the city, surrounded by a big open area that had benches and nice grassy areas. There were beautiful gold-colored buildings along 2 sides of the square and then a huge cathedral and some government building that we guessed might be the capital. There were tons of people out and hundreds of pigeons. People were selling birdseed so kids would come and throw seeds and the pigeons would come out of nowhere and be all over! They would all fly away at the same time too. It was really cool. Arielle sang "feed the birds, tuppins a bag" for most of the afternoon after we saw that. We also both had a good crack up fliming ourselves singing it later. It took several takes, but mostly we are just cracking up (Oh, we did this after sleeping for 3 of the past 36 hours). We loved Lima right away and the people were so friendly! Several people came up and talked to us, including a group of adult students who asked if they could practice their English with us and a group of young students too. But the most interesting thing about Lima was...the amount of ice cream cones these people eat! For real, there are soft serve machines every few feet on the street and Peruvians are always eating cones. We sat and counted over 20 cones walk by in just a small area in 5 minutes. It seemed so funny to us, because who would have ever known that Peru loves ice cream cones so much, but they do! We walked around the city all day and sat at outdoor cafes for breakfast and dinner. We had arranged with our cab driver to pick us up later and we made it back to the airport just fine. When we got ready to pay the driver he handed us a little card that said, "Do not pay any more money for the cab. Only give a tip to the driver if you want" (our driver didn't speak english, but must have known people who did.) We found out on the way into Lima we had paid in American dollars and not Soles...this means we gave about 3 times as much as needed! Whoops, I guess we havn't ever traveled before? But, we were so happy to see that the people were honest, and had a really great first day in Peru and feel great about being here! We're at the orphanage now, (which is amazing) but we're going to make a second entry about it becuase when our entries get too long it's hard to get through them. We'll write more soon! Ciao!

Pictures: Us in our buggy scooter!

City center in Lima

Peruvian little girl feeding the birds

Our first pic of us in Peru!