Summer

We’re getting back into the swing of things here at the orphanage.  The official summer schedule has started, which means we’re all busy spending a lot of time with the kids.  Every day, I (David) have tutoring time with the five oldest kids here who are still in school.  During the school year, this normally revolves around completing homework given to them at school, but during the summer, it’s my job to come up with things for them to do.  I’ve decided to put them through the process of researching for and writing an essay.  In their school, it seems like their homework is just to copy and paste answers from Wikipedia, so for this project I’m making them use additional resources.  We have a book series of middle school reading level on important people in history in various fields, and I’m having the kids compare/contrast two people who are in the same field and decide who they think was more important.  Papers are being written about Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Jackson and Bob Marley, and Michael Jackson and John Lennon.  After a week of working an hour a day, we’re still in the research phase, although I’m encouraging them to try and develop a thesis and outline now.

After tutoring, I work with a house’s worth of kids in the garden.  It’s a challenge to find work that I can have a bunch of kids doing at once with minimal supervision, and especially hard to keep the younger ones from destroying things in the process.  It went alright this week, but it’s going to be hard to keep them interested in pulling weeds.  They’re far more likely to pull each other’s hair and start a wrestling match in the middle of my fragile plants.  Speaking of the garden, here are some pictures of what my first nearly five months of work have accomplished.

This is a patch of aji (peppers) and nabo (it's like a mix between white carrot and an onion, and it goes in soup)

These are all little lettuce plants that I transplanted from their germination patch

These are all radishes, except the near-right corner, which has a few lettuce plants that we're ready to transplant

And this is the whole garden

After working in the garden, I have an hour of reading time with the Amigos, the house of older boys.  I’ve decided to read the Chronicles of Narnia aloud to them in Spanish, and they are loving it.  At first I wasn’t sure if they would be interested or pay attention, but now they actually get excited when I walk into their house holding a book (who woulda thought?) and they beg me for just a few minutes more, just a chapter more, just stay here til it’s done, when I try to leave at the end of reading time.  It makes me very happy that they’re so excited to have me read to them, and I hope that this encourages them to read more on their own as well.  We’ll almost be able to read one book a week, so I should be able to finish the series with them this summer (and don’t forget, now is summer).  

In the afternoon, we put on various “classes” for the kids.  I’m in charge of outdoor games, so I spent the afternoons this week playing soccer, jump-roping, soccer, volley-ball, soccer, and sand boarding.  (if you didn’t notice, they’re a bit fond of soccer).  Behind the orphanage there are some pretty steep sand dunes, and I got to take both of the younger houses sand-boarding this week.  It’s a blast watching the 7 and 8 year olds trying to make it down the hill standing up, and only succeeding half the time J.  It was also very fun to play there with the three-year-olds.  They were very scared, but really enjoyed riding down the hill in the arms of us volunteers.  Of course, the hill is steep and sand is difficult to climb, so by the end of the time out there I was walking up the hill carried at least two kids and three boards.  What a workout.  

In the evenings, we have some time to just hang out with the kids.  They’re more calm and tired out by then, so that ends up being the best time for us to have quality conversations with them.  It’s fun to just sit with a bunch of kids in the coolness of the summer evening and talk about their hopes and dreams.  That, or get pranked with a bucket of water and/or a giant group of people waiting to throw you in the air.  Less restful, but fun nonetheless. -D