Proyecto Familiar (plus summer starts!)

This weekend was busy busy busy…and the kid in me definitely came out between the soccer, kickball, art projects, parachutes, Twister, tug-of-war, movies, and music in the park. One of my favorite parts of the weekend though was something we call Proyecto Familiar. It’s a project us volunteers are in charge of. About ¾ of our kids have siblings living here on site with them. So every couple months, each family gets together with a volunteer to make supper and just spend the evening juntos. This weekend, it was Yocattia and Franyersy’s turn. They’re probably one of the closest set of siblings on sight. I let Yocattia plan the night, so we started off by making tostones (fried plantains) the way their mom taught them when they were little. Then we fried up some eggs, cheese, and salami. And finally we made some chocolate pudding and finished the night off with a movie. Plus they squeezed a little salsa-dancing lesson for me in there too. It was a blast!! 

And as of today, school is officially out for the summer! This summer is sure to be an exciting one as we have 11(!) new volunteers arriving, 5 full-year ones and 6 one-month ones to teach fun summer classes. There are currently ten of us volunteers so we are more than doubling! Also, this summer, more of our kids than ever are going on vacation for anywhere from a week to a month to spend time with family they have…whether that be a parent that is still alive, an aunt or uncle, an older sibling, or a friend…so we won’t have nearly as many kids on site for awhile. And finally, we will have an unprecedented amount of visitors from ex-volunteers to families coming to spend time doing projects here from high school and college groups to my 2 sisters, a friend (Becca), and my aunt, Mary at the end of July! Let the busy-ness begin!