Orfanato

Tuesday I went to the orphanage to volunteer for the first time. I went in a group of about 7 of us. We had to take a bus for over 30 minutes to get there, but since we had seats it wasn’t so bad. And actually, I think that’s the generally rule for the buses. If you’re able to get a seat, you’ll be fine. If not, get ready to get whipped about in every which way and shoved up against someone who you doubt has bathed recently. But I had a seat so no worries.

The orphanage is only for boys, 80 of them to be exact, all ages 5-11. Each one was completely precious. As volunteers for the day we were just there to play with them. So we spent most the time giving piggy back rides. The kids were especially enamored with my friend Joshua, who has lots of tattoos, brought his fancy sunglasses, and a camera. They kept running away with his sunglasses, just for fun. He let them use his camera and got some really cool pictures out of it. And they all kept fingering his tattoos and asking if they would come off if he washed them.

We spent the evening on their playground. There was an area with a playset, a small/dusty field type area, and some blacktop between two walls that they’d made into their fútbol field. Really it was a pretty good set up. The only thing I didn’t really like was if that is how it is every night, if the kids just run around together for hours. In every after school program that I was ever blessed to be able to have, we always had some organized games. They would organize freeze tag and we always had the huge colored parachute that we would grab onto and play with. There didn’t seem to be anything like this there. So…it could be a great opportunity for me to come up with something.

Before coming I had thought I might like to do an English club for the kids, similar to the Spanish club I did in Muncie. After visiting I think this could be a really good opportunity. We were warned that the kids only know bad words in English from the movies. I tried to ask them if they knew any colors or numbers though, and they were super excited to yell them in my ear and put them out all around us. It could be a really good opportunity for all of them and for myself as well. Hopefully I’ll meet with Rotary this Monday and see what they had in mind for me and know if this is something I should start pursuing. If so, I’ll start working on a matching grant to raise money for supplies, something you can ALL BE A PART OF! So watch for news about that.

I finally had dance class today. Having had two whole extra days to build expectations, it sort of let me down a little. There are six of us all learning salsa, four girls and two guys. To start I was playing the role of the guy for Kathrin. We actually did a pretty good job. Then we switched partners and I was with Joshua. We did alright but really didn’t have enough time to get things right. And the teacher, well he sort of just kept saying “everyone needs to take smaller steps” and “no no no it’s not like that at all”. Since that was the majority of the directions, I think next week I’ll be that really annoying student asking super specific questions every five minutes.