The Day of Love and Friendship!

February birthdays...Yudelkis and Cristal!

Yup. This blog is about this past week, specifically this past week’s celebration of the Day of Love and Friendship as it is called in Spanish or Valentine’s Day as we call it in the USA. I think I like the way it’s done much more here though. Honestly, it’s really not celebrated much at all…there’s no commercials or signs or advertisements trying to convince people to buy flowers, chocolate, or jewelry, because again to be honest, very few people can afford anything beyond the absolute necessities. So rather the day must be focused on less material things…at the most, perhaps a handmade card. I was quite thrilled to receive two myself from some of girls, one being the most intricate of creations with all sorts of details from my one of my most troublesome girls….it touched my heart that she could sit still long enough to make such a time-consuming piece of art and that she chose me to give it to. I’ve worked a lot with her on behavior in the last couple months and she’s gotten mad at me more than a few times, so it felt like a thank you in a twisted, I’m-a-troubled-12-year-old-girl kind of way. That and her pounding on my window at 7:00am in the morning to wish me a Happy Day of Love and Friendship and to tell me that she had something to give me later on. Quite the wake-up call! Really, when it comes down to it, ‘Love and Friendship’ it what it’s all about and why I’m here.

This photo really doesn't do Eridania's creation justice, but you get the idea...

 Beyond that, I had a fun weekend with the girls. They spent all Friday afternoon and Saturday morning deep-cleaning the house and extinguishing all those crazy cucarachas (cockroaches). And then all of a sudden, they needed some tissue paper, tape, and glitter and both bedrooms in the house turned into rooms fit for princesses. There are now paper hearts and flowers hanging from the ceiling and walls. There are photos everywhere and each girl has a heart with their name on it placed somewhere in the room! It was fun to see them take a normal, boring project like a deep-clean of the house and go the extra mile. Since there aren’t not too many moments when they’re all so well-behaved and hard-working, Tia Elena and I thought it would be appropriate to award them with some positive reinforcement. So off we went to spend the afternoon in the batey playing basketball, drinking pop, finding sugar cane, and just hanging out. Then in the evening, we had a bit of a party complete with more pop, chips, and a Disney Channel movie (Jump It!) projected onto the wall so it felt like we were at the movies.

Almost looks like a scene from 'Little Mermaid' under the sea...

Each of their areas complete with the new hearts!

I even got a heart!

 Other than getting in a lot of quality time with the girls, we’ve been keeping busy with visitor groups as I mentioned in my last blog. The Canadian group of fathers and daughters left this past Friday after an amazing visit. As it turns out, some awesome connections were made with the kids, because we ended up with 9 new sponsors after the visit…woohoo! The 9 kids were pretty pumped! Now, we have a group from Seattle here picking up on the projects where the Canadians left off. In this group, there are already a couple sponsors, so those kids are so happy to have visitors!

Last Tuesday, the Canadians put on a big BBQ. A lot of the kids performed!

Here are the older girls dancing!

Jesel grilled...

...And everyone ate!

Finally, registration for auditions for the trip to MN that Friends of the Orphans is sponsoring has finished! And guess how many have signed up to try out for the four spots?? 32!! So now the kids are in the process of working on their artistic audition as well as their testimonies in English. I think the kids are really realizing how much work this is, which for some kids means they would rather try the next time around. But for other kids, they’re working on their material everyday and being super focused and determined. It will be interesting to see how things turn out! It’s cool seeing them put all their energy into something they really want! 

Registration in the park!

The last precious moment of this past week was watching one of the little boys, Luisito, learn to ride a bike. We had all of the bikes out on Sunday morning and everyone was telling Luisito that he didn’t know how and that he should just give his turn to someone else. So I asked the older boys in the park if one of them could go teach him. Miguel, a 16-year old boy, volunteers and goes over and tells everyone to knock it off and proceeds to get Luisito on the bike and moving. Before long, he was teaching him how to brake, how to turn, etc. and Luisito was riding around all on his own with minimal wipe-outs I was so proud of the both of them! It’s those little everyday moments that mean the most!