"For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

The walk to school was very successful!  In the US walking 35 kids to school would be a nightmare, but here it's a great time to practice our Spanish skills and get plenty of stares.  Apparently they don't see many Gringas here.  The boys were ready backpacks in hand by 6:30 looking very precious in their school uniforms.  We were told that walking them to school was better than them taking the bus from Jovenes because they wanted the boys to feel like they were part of the community.  He was so right:  as we walked down the road, many of the people would stop and say hello to the boys.  We are looking forward to also feeling like part of the community someday.

Picking the boys up from Alison (the Bilingual School in Zamarano)

Playing Corn-hole in Casa Rosada

Monday, a Brigade from Torch came to help with one of the worker's house just down the road from Jovenes in Zamarano.  They had a group of about 40 people so 30 went to work at the house while about 10 of the women stayed at Jovenes.  Ronald had told us that part of our job was to speak with people that came with the brigades since we are really the only ones that can fluently speak English here and most of the people in brigades don't speak Spanish.  Little did we know, translating for such a large group of people was a great challenge.  We later realized that it was really difficult to switch back in forth from Spanish to English so quickly.  We had gotten into such a habit of speaking Spanish (we even speak Spanish to each other some times) so to be asked so many questions in English was more difficult than you would think.  It was great, though, to get to share our stories with the brigade and give them some insight on the boys and some of their situations.  One of the highlights of our week so far was lunch...PIZZA!  We have never been more excited to eat pizza and drink coke.  It was nice to get a little taste of food from back home.  The rest of the afternoon was full of games, water fights and a lot of sun.  The boys had a great time but the most interesting part of the day came when the brigade was getting ready to go.  As the boys were saying bye to everyone they jokingly came up to us and starting giving us goodbye hugs.  It was such a great feeling to know that we weren't leaving and that they will see many brigades come and go this summer but we will always be there.  Brigades are a wonderful thing for the boys to give them something new and exciting to look forward to.  It really brightens their day to have a new group of people to play with but we think believe that because their lives are full of things that change, it is also good for them to have something that remains the same.

Just a normal day in Casa Rosada.

Sweet little Anthony - youngest one in Casa Amarilla

Our next adventure came when Gustava decided to catch a bird (with his hands) and chase us around the dorm.  Once we finally thought he was done and had gotten rid of the poor bird...he pulled it out of his pocket (yes, you heard me right, his pocket!). Pobre pájaro!  And let's be clear...I do not like birds! It was quite the experience.  Dinner, was so great.  Marvin was in the library working on the computers so Hannah and I got eat dinner with Sarai.  Get ready for this...we had an entire dinner conversation with her in Spanish!  It really is amazing all that we have learned in just under a week.

Issac and Guity love to play with the Gringas!

Today was, from what we can gather, our first basically normal day at Jovenes.  They went to school, they came back from school, the played soccer, it rained, and then they ate dinner.  Of course, there are always funny stories that happened in between all these events, it is just hard to write about every one of them.  But one of our favorites was a water gun fight (and by gun we mean spray bottles) that we had with Bayron, Pancho, Noe, and occasionally Johan when he wasn't running around with a trash bag on his head.  He is definitely one of the most unique children we have met.  Even though we can't always remember everything we have a few things that we definitely don't want to forget, so here goes:

• Telling Adonay that he didn't need to know how to ask someone to be his wife in English
• Fernando wants to be a painter
• Alex really loves to clean and organize things just so, when someone asks, he knows where it is
• My bracelet that says "I Love Ti" (Spanglish)
• Bayron running around acting like Captain America and trying to repeat what we say in English
• Fernando saying "Buen Provecho" (Bon Appetite) even when we aren't eating
• Sarai telling us her observations about the boys loving Gringas
• Nery puffing out his chest and strutting every time he walks by us
• Selvin trying to hold my hand every time I am near him
• Eduardo beaming with pride when we gave him a hug last night after calling him out for not giving us a hug after devo
• Samuel being so proud of himself for matching pictures of animals to the English word even when he put a picture of a Flamingo for an Ostrich.
• Johan attempting to tell Hannah ghost stories in Spanish
• Tio Santos speaking to us in English and all of the older boys cheering every time we understood what he was saying

Well these are just a few of the great things we get to experience every day.  We hope that you can experience some of that joy with us.  Looking forward to hearing from you all!

LauraBeth and Hannah

Studying our English with a baseball bat :)

Loves to be held!