Cake & Asian People

Nicole just turned two. I actually haven't seen her in a bit--I don't know if the adoption is done and she won't be coming back, or if her soon-to-be mom is just keeping her for a while. Apparently she brought over cake and party favors (a top for each of the boys and some plastic bracelets for the girls--both big hits) so that the kids could celebrate with Nicole. I guess there was still some left over the next morning. When I walked in expecting to see the usual milk and bread, what I actually found was 5 kids shoveling chocolate cake into their mouths. Well, 4 kids shoveling anyway. Milagros was actually a little leery of it. I got the feeling she doesn't come across cake often--she wouldn't put any in her mouth without blowing on it first. Alicia tried to tell her,"It's cake! You don't need to do that!" She just looked up at Alicia with a confused face and spooned up another bite to blow on.

Michaela (with just about an entire piece of cake in her mouth)
Also, Gabriel in the background being a goof

Afterwards, I took these sugar-hyped kids (who hardly ever eat sugar) to the park. That was interesting. Though, after getting used to taking eleven to the park, these five could have been hooked up to maple syrup IVs all night and taking only them would still seem like a piece of cake. [Hah! Get it? :]

Almost all of the playground equipment is broken, short of a couple of swings and a few see-saws. I heard a rumor that it's going to be rebuilt, though I've come to realize that only about half or so of the rumors I hear here are true. I have high hopes though--today there was a man with a big fancy video camera taking footage of the ruins. [Not hyperbole...that really is the exact word I would use to describe what's left of this park.]

Tutui & Michaela on the "slide"

I was trying to take more pictures of them when my camera ran out of space. I never clear my memory card. So I was shuffling through pictures, figuring out what I already had on my computer at home. The kids like to be over my shoulder every time I'm doing anything, and this time was no exception. Now, Argentina is full of hispanic people and white people. They don't have a whole lot of diversity going on, at least not in this town. I've been here for three weeks and have seen a total of 2 Asian people and 1 black person. And I get out a lot more than these kids. So, as I was scrolling through, they saw a picture of Jonathan and me. They thought of the only Asian person they could think of and... now they are all convinced that I am dating Jackie Chan. There is no talking them out of it. Jon will have to practice his stuntwork or they'll be super disappointed if they ever meet him.

Jackie & Me :]

To Argentina & Beyond

The kids playing with their new toys! And very much enjoying them :]
Contrary to appearances, we are not in a cave...just against the wall that surrounds their home.
Mi hermano menor :]
Blurry, because he couldn't stop moving...but I like it anyway!

How could I NOT want to keep this one???

Notice my great watch. I didn't own a watch--I always just used my cell phone to know what time it was. Obviously I'm out of service here, so that presented a problem. There aren't any Walmart or Target-like stores here, so my only options were jewelry stores or toy stores. I didn't want to spend a bunch of money on one at the jewelry store, so now Buzz Lightyear tells me what time it is :] The kids think that's pretty cool.

Pasta alla Tía

What do you think: Cutest kids in the whole entire world? Yeah, me too.

I know I know, I've been slacking. It's just with so much going on and all of the drama lately I've been unsure of exactly what to write about. Veronica went to Arco Iris last night and talked to Alicia. The three boys are definitely not coming back, which I am extremely saddened by; they were like three little brothers to me. My Spanish is suffering for it too--they were the ones I talked with the most and were so intent on teaching me new words and phrases. Veronica is going to try and see if we can locate them so we can swing by and at least say goodbye, if not more.

The house feels so empty as there are only six kids now. (Carolina is gone as well; I guess she went to a place where there are more girls her age.) Whoever told me that the five siblings are going back to their mom was wrong. Michaela is getting adopted by one couple, and Tutui and Milagros are getting adopted together by another lucky lucky couple whom I'm extremely jealous of and want to meet so I can matter-of-factly announce to them that "Sorry you can't have these kids because I'm taking them home with me forever and ever." But I suppose since that isn't exactly possible, it's good that they'll have parents. Nicole is getting adopted by a woman who has been taking her on weekends. I don't know when all of this is happening. I will be here for another month, and I doubt any of the adoptions will be completed by then. Apparently it's a really long process. I guess Fabian and Gabriel will stay there at the house--it seems there aren't quite so many couples looking to adopt older boys.

I made lunch finally for the kids on Saturday. I at first wasn't sure about my pasta choice. They get a lot of pasta, among other foods that are cheap and packaged in bulk. I decided though, that what I was going to make would be a far cry from their cheap spaghetti covered in tomato puree, so they probably wouldn't even relate the two, and I was right. They said it was delicious, and started chanting "Mañana también! Mañana también!" [Tomorrow too!] I said that that probably wouldn't happen, but I would try to cook for them again sometime. I brought Chipás and grapes too, both special treats. They never get to eat those things, as their much inferior cousins known as bread and apples are so much cheaper. They were so excited when there was extra of everything, exclaiming "We get to eat this for DINNER too!"

My most well-spent time in a kitchen ever, that's for sure.

:]

No Soy Mamá

Me, Tutui















Me, Michaela, Nicole




I know it's been a little while since you've heard from me. As you can tell from my last post, things have been absolutely crazy. I'm going to hold off on posting updates concerning the situation with those 3 boys. Veronica is going to help me figure out exactly what's going on, so I can make it more factual and less rumors/speculation. Hopefully that will happen sometime this weekend.


Meanwhile back at the house, the kids that are still there are enjoying their new toys. I bought them a set of Legos, because I've never met a kid who didn't like playing with Legos. I know I loved them. Well, I didn't buy Legos exactly. As I mentioned before, anything imported from the US or Europe is ridiculously expensive. A box of Legos was in the $20-25 range. And yes, that's US Dollars, NOT Pesos. So, I found the local version: Blocky. I knew I had made the right choice when, as it was taken out of the bag, their eyes got wide and they started exclaiming to each other, "Wow! It's just like on TV!". That was yesterday. Today, when I arrived, they were STILL playing with them. I wouldn't be surprised if a few little building blocks spent the night under each of their pillows. On the back of the box, there are pictures of other Blocky playsets that are available for sale. They pointed out one they might like, if possible. Fabian found one of the other ones interesting, but he didn't want to sound greedy. So he pointed to the one he liked and said (rough translation) "And after that one, way, wayy wayy way after, like FOREVER after, much much much later after you buy that one, could you maybe see if you could bring this one?" It was so cute. Thanks to some generous donations from people back home, I should be able to buy both of those sets that they want so badly. That was so nice of you guys--and I want you to know that the kids and I all appreciate it very much.

Tutui is an absolute angel. He grins at me and then wraps his arms around my neck as tight as he can about every 5 minutes. Sometimes he just wants to look at me and run his hands over my face and through my hair. He looks like he's trying to memorize me. I think I'm the only person that shows him the kind of love and care a 3-year-old should have. Sometimes if it's been a while I say, "Tutui, I want a hug!" He absolutely lights up and comes running toward me with open arms. He has quite the grip on my heart. I recently learned that his REAL name is Jonathan. Interesting. I thought it was Tutui--no one calls him by anything else. If you ask him though what his name is, he will tell you that it is Jonathan. But, if you ask him what he is called (The more common way of asking for names in Spanish), he will say "Tutui". I kept asking everyone where the name Tutui came from if his real name is Jonathan, but no one seems to know. As if he wasn't already adorable enough, he commonly speaks about himself in 3rd person. He'll say things like "Tutui is going to play with these!" or "Tutui has to go to the bathroom!" Today he looked at a picture on my camera in which he was blinking, and said "Tutui is doing [and then proceeded to blink at me rapidly]". Somehow the fact that all of this is in Spanish makes it even cuter.

I really wish I could bring all these kids home with me to stay...or at least to meet everyone. They're not going to know what happened when I leave. Michaela (the 7 year old girl who has her mouth wide open in the picture up top) is old enough to understand that I'm not her mother, but that doesn't stop her from whispering to every other kid when I go to pick her up from school "That's my mama". She thinks I can't hear her. Milagros, though, is still seriously confused. She calls me "Mamá" or "Mami" even more often now. Sometimes I try to set her straight, and say "No soy Mamá" (I'm not Mama), but she just laughs and laughs. She thinks that's just about the funniest thing she's ever heard. I have no doubt she's thinking something to the effect of "Silly Mommy..."

Anyway, I'll have more news soon. Hopefully good news...

Buenas Noches!

Un día muy dificil...

So I wanted to cook for these kids, since the offer had been made and since I'd been eating their food. Yesterday evening I went to the grocery store, about a 15 minute walk from my house. I decided on one of my favorites: Nick & Jon's famous homemade pasta Alfredo with Prosciutto, because it's both delicious and easy to make. It wasn't until I was at the store and halfway done with my shopping that I realized: I hadn't the slightest idea how to say "nutmeg" in Spanish. So I was wandering aimlessly... For some reason it was a little bit of a consolation that I at least knew the language enough to reply "Yes, I am looking for something in particular, but I don't know what it's called in Spanish" when asked if I needed help, instead of sitting there with a dumb look on my face, even though it didn't make any difference. I finally found the spices, and set out to find the fine brown powder. Turns out, fine brown powder makes up about half of a spice rack. So I'm picking up every little plastic baggy and holding it up to my face trying to sniff out the nutmeg, looking I don't know how crazy and garnering a few more stares than I would have liked. But I found my nutmeg.

Finally after being in the store for at least an hour, I was at the cash register. Veronica had told me not to carry around my passport, because a photocopy of it is sufficient ID to show when using a credit card. That had been true everywhere, up until then. They kind of scoffed at my photocopy and asked for my original. I said it was at home. They asked if home was far, I said about 15 minutes. Knowing they were going to tell me to go get it, I thought about saying "Yes, absolutely, extremely far, no possible way I can retrieve it", but I didn't want them to say "Well, too bad then, we'll just be taking these groceries back now. " So as expected, they told me that I'd have to go home and get my passport. I wanted to say "okay" and leave and not come back, and let them have fun putting everything back... but it was an hour's worth of shopping. And it was for the kids. So about 20 minutes later I returned, passport in hand, to claim my stuff. By that time I was already dead tired, as I had practically ran home and back, knowing that they left my cream, butter, cheese, and other should-be-refrigerated items just sitting there on the counter. I picked up my 7-8 bags and trudged back home, hands, arms, back, and neck aching as I finally set them on the kitchen table. Those were some hard-earned groceries.

I decided to do a test run last night here and make dinner, to make sure the "crema" I bought was indeed heavy cream and not sour cream, and to avoid any other such culinary catastrophes. My family here very much appreciated the dinner, saying "Que rico! Que riccissimo!" [How delicious, how absolutely delicious!] more times than I can remember. Yelen asked if I could take over and cook every day, which is absolutely ridiculous, because her Mom's cooking is 23094320498 times better than my cooking. But I appreciated the compliment anyway. Raquel was telling her friend how I made dinner, describing everything I made, and apparently he said "What?! For dinner!?? That sounds like a LUNCH!" I told her how silly that sounded to me, since things are the opposite in America. Here, lunch is the big meal of the day, and dinner is the sandwich or the salad or whatever.

So by this morning, as you can imagine, I was practically beaming with excitement as I walked to Arco Iris from the bus stop. I arrived in the doorway with a smile on my face and bags in my hand, only for both of them to drop upon hearing news worse than anything I could have expected: "Four of the boys never came home after school last night. They're missing. We've called the police and the father [of 3 of the boys]." I couldn't say anything most of the morning. I just sat there holding on to Tutui [who had, since the last time I'd seen him, fallen down and contracted a black eye], kicking pebbles and being so frustrated that though I was scared to death, there wasn't a thing I could do. As if all of that wasn't enough for this house to handle in one day, their stove decided to not work and the picture below is of Carolina trying to cook some food over a fire on the patio.

Finally, maybe around 10 or 10:30 am, their dad came over to say that he had found the boys last night and that they were all at his house. I guess he didn't bother to come over or call sooner...of course, I seemed to be the only one that really cared anyway. I still don't know what happened... If they went wandering and got lost, if someone led them away, or if they were running away. Something tells me though, that it was the latter. Anyway, Alicia doesn't want the 3 boys back in the house. I thought it was related to this incident, but I guess it's been going on for a while and they were supposed to be out by Thursday, even before this. She was just doing their dad a favor, looking after the kids while he figured things out and found a way to support them. I guess that's been going on for over a year now, and dad is still with the woman who doesn't want them and still doesn't have a job, and Alicia has had enough and says he has to take them back. He's saying that he can't, that he has no means to support them. As always, I don't know exactly how accurate this is, as I hear bits and pieces from the various adults and older kids, all in Spanish, and sometimes in disagreement. One told me that everyone would be back tomorrow (though the 3 boys [Zacharia, Ezequiel, Solamon] are still supposed to be out by Thursday). Another told me that those three wouldn't be back at all. So what tomorrow has in store is as much of a mystery to me as it is to anyone, and whatever it is I have a feeling it won't be super pleasant.

You know, I just wish that SOMEONE, most preferably their father, would realize how lucky he is just to know these kids, and step up and take some responsibilty. I know I wish there was more I could do; I'm absolutely going crazy. A bit earlier I went out for the only therapy I could think of... I spent money on them. They're going to know me by name at the toy store...

T-Shirt Prison Day

I mentioned before that the kids didn't have school on Thursday or Friday. This was due to "Dia del Maestro," or "Teacher's Day". El Señor (I've recently learned that his name is Jose, but much too late for me to switch) asked me if we have that in the US. I did a quick inventory of my Spanish vocabulary and grammatical abilities in order to discern whether or not I would be able to explain to him that we do have something similar though it is not quite so much of a holiday as school is still in session, but more of just a day in which you're generally supposed to say "Thank You" to your teacher, or at the very most if you're not such a great test-taker present her with a stuffed bear holding a heart embroidered with the phrase "World's Best Teacher". My verdict was that he wouldn't really care anyway; he already thinks America is just a bunch of people dancing naked at the gas station. (He watched some documentary on a San Diego nudist colony?) So I just said "Sí." He asked me what it was called. I should have lied and just said "Teacher's Day", because it turns out "appreciation" isn't the easiest word for someone unfamiliar with English to swallow and I felt bad listening to him say over and over something that sounded more or less like "T-Shirt Prison Day".

So anyway, yeah, no school and I spent all day there on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This required me eating lunch there, which having seen the dirt-caked insect-infested "kitchen", made me a bit nervous. But I couldn't resist the squeals of excitement that followed Alicia's inquiry as to whether I'd like to eat with them, and so I agreed. I'm already pretty much convinced that considering where I work, there's not much chance of me getting out of here without at least one instance of getting sick or contracting lice or something. But, we'll hope otherwise, and so far so good.

I'm happy to report that, though deprived of so many of the culinary wonders of the world, and more than likely some of the nutrients they should be getting, at least these kids are not starving. As I mentioned before, breakfast is always warm milk and bread. The most popular way to approach this meal is by breaking the bread into little pieces and putting it in the milk, and then spooning out the soggy result. I think drinking milk is disgusting in the first place, so I try to hide from them the grimace that I know starts to form as I watch. Even worse is when they put the rim of the cup down at the edge of the table to corral the precious dropped crumbs into it. Judging by lack of disinfectant products, that tabletop probably has more germs on it than the bottom of my shoe. I thought about buying such products, but they wouldn't be able to replenish them, so I don't know if I'd be doing more harm than good when considering the tolerance for germs they seem to have built up in their immune systems from living like this.
Lunch Thursday was noodles with tomato puree and a piece of bread, Friday was rice with tomatoes with a piece of bread, and Saturday was polenta with tomatoes and a piece of bread. Where they might suffer from the lack of protein, I'm sure it's doing me good to have a meal a day that isn't a steak or a sausage. I feel bad taking their food though, and dish about half of mine into the kid's bowls when El Señor isn't looking. It's not that he would mind them having extra food, it's just that I have a feeling he would assume they asked me for it and a lecture would then ensue.

He can be very firm, even mean. He yells, he sometimes expects Tutui to be behaving like an 8 year old even though he's 3, and he never calls Fabiano by any name other than "El Gordo" [Basically, "Fatty"]. You can tell he's a good guy somewhere underneath it all though. I mean, he's taking care of these children that others have abandoned. He jokes with them, dances with them, and is always trying to find little ways to brighten their day, whether it be with a few swallows each (literally) of Coca-Cola or an occasional bowl of popcorn for everyone to share.

Anyway, it's getting late.
I had more to write but I think it'll wait until tomorrow...

Yo soy mono

(Click on the pictures to see them big)












Solamon and I sitting on a bench that's missing about
half of its pieces. Zacharia in the background.



















Ezequiel hanging off the playground
equipment. I always tell him that he
scares me, and he insists that I shouldn't
because "Yo soy mono" (I am a monkey).
I suppose it's true enough...
Michaela is in the background, with a ball
in her shirt thinking no one can see it to
take it from here if she keeps it there.
















Yesterday the lights weren't working for a time,
so we were all outside on the patio. Some more tired
than others...This is Zacharia and Milagros. He's picking
something out of her hair; I'm not sure what.


Slowly I've been able to piece together more information about the kids. When I listed the five who have a drug-addict mother, I was wrong about one. Those siblings are actually Fabiano, Gabriel, Michaela, Tutui, and Milagros. She came to visit them yesterday evening. The younger ones kept calling her "Tia" and she was getting all flustered, telling them to call her "Mami". You can't really blame them though. At 1 and 3 years old, they can't be too sure about what's going on in life at all. I'm not sure she even has the right to correct them, but I suppose that's not my call to make. I just think they deserve better. Milagros has actually taken to calling me "Tia" about half of the time and "Mami" the other half. I remind her "No, no soy Mami," but I don't think she intends to do it anymore than she intends to call her mother "Tia".



Then Zacharia, Ezequiel, and Solamon are all brothers from the same father. I didn't understand for sure whether they have the same mother or not. Anyway, the father lives somewhere nearby, but has abandoned the kids because he is with a new woman now who doesn't want them. They go visit him on Sundays. I'm not sure what you say to a father who has abandoned you for a new family, but I guess they deal with it.

That leaves only Nicole, the other baby girl. As far as I understand, she doesn't have parents around (though again, this is all coming at me quickly in Spanish so I can't be 100% sure about my details). She is gone on weekends. A lady comes and gets her, who I don't think is her mother, but maybe a relative or someone who is looking into adopting her, I'm not really sure. Maybe SHE's the one who is getting adopted, but I could have sworn it was Michaela. I don't know, we'll see I guess.

Hola America

Getting a South American kid to throw a ball is nearly impossible. If you tell them to use their hands, they pick it up, drop it, and then kick it. I just thought they might like to try a new game once in a while, but that was silly of me. Fútbol it is. I bought a ball at the store the other day and it's practically all they've been playing with since.

They do still enjoy drawing. I guess they got sick of drawing just for me... One of them asked me to write my Mom's name down and now I have a small collection of pictures that say "Para Sarah y Kaylyn". There's actually a bit of an obsession with you, Mom. They always want to know what your name is, how old you are, where you live, what you cook for me, etc. They never ask about Dad though...

For everyone asking about sending toys: From what I understand, the regular mail system here isn't very good. I might not even be here anymore by the time any packages sent USPS arrive. They said UPS or whatever would work fine (and should be able to tell you when the package will arrive by), but I'm afraid that would be extremely expensive. If anyone would still like to try, I'll give you my local address. One thing I do wish I had that I can't buy here are books in English. (Really, really simple ones, with pictures and a word telling you what the picture is. Mostly just to build vocabulary.) Some of them don't know any English, and the others only know some numbers, some colors, and still the favorite "You can´t catch me". I was excited when I saw some flash cards that promised to teach kids English, but upon closer examination, it turned out that among other problems all the Ns were backwards (which I'm really, really confused about, because they use the same alphabet as we do).

Actually, I'm proud of the fact that I've taught them all "Please" and "Thank You". When we draw is a great time to practice a little bit of English. I have all of the crayons and pencils. The younger ones know they won't get a blue pencil without saying "blue please," and the older ones know they won't get a blue pencil without saying "blue pencil please". Sometimes we won't even be drawing and I'll hear Zacharia just singing to himself "BLLAaack PPPEncil PLEEeeease". He really likes the word "please," which if he's going to pick a favorite, I don't mind that being it. He was the one saying it over and over and over in the video I posted yesterday. He likes to say it even when it doesn't make sense...during games of Tag it isn't unusual for me to hear "You can´t catch me please! You can't catch me please!" as I'm running after him.

This is a video of the cutest 3 year old in the whole entire world, Tutui. I'm saying "I'm gonna catch you". Then afterwards he's saying Hello to all of you in America :]

This is Zacharia and Ezequiel counting for me in English. Solamon doesn't know how, but he walks in front and just stands there because he wants to be in it too. After 11 Zacharia says "Well...I don't know any more!" and then after 14 Ezequiel says the same thing. We're working on that.

Also thanks to Jonathan pointing out the obvious to me, I changed the comment settings and now anyone can do it without signing up for any sort of account :]
Hasta mañana!

Que rico!

Eating the mystery fruit

Ezequiel, Solamon, Me, Michaela

Ezequiel

Tutui

Michaela

Almost Everyone

Michaela, Me, Nicole

Since the kids didn't have school today or yesterday, I stayed from morning until night with them. That's why I haven't had time to update this. I still don't really have time to write much now--hopefully I can catch up tomorrow or Sunday. Here are tons of pictures and a video to entertain while you wait...

Today the kids found a tree to climb that had a kind of fruit on it I'd never seen. They finally convinced me to try it, and it was actually delicious. I have no idea what it was and also it was kind of dirty, so I hope I'm still alive tomorrow. I don´t know how the kids managed to get it all over their faces, considering it's size. (I'm holding a branch of them in the first picture).

Also I wore my sunglasses today which was I guess fascinating. I haven't actually seen anyone at all wearing sunglasses on the street. Of course everyone wanted to try them on...

They're so wonderful. Enjoy!

Comments

First I just want to thank those who have been offering comments, insight, and questions. They really are my motivation to keep this up, as I know I should.

When I made this I was under the impression that anyone could add comments, but unfortunately I guess it isn´t. For those who told me you were having problems with it, you SHOULD be able to use either your Google account if you have one, or your AOL/AIM screenname, even if you don't use it anymore. Just select AIM from the drop box that says "open ID".

If you do ask questions, there's a box you can click that will then notify you of updates to the list of comments so you'll know when I've answered them. This is the thing I'm on the most (more often than email) and therefore probably the best means to do that.

I love Argentina as I'm sure you've picked up on, but I do miss everyone.

Love,
Sarah

You Can't Catch Me

Here are pictures of four of the kids. And I´m not ignoring your comments Jonathan, I just don't have any pictures of myself yet.

Top : Tutui (3) on a swing at the park, wearing a shirt that's both too small and is missing a button (which could very likely be a case of cause and effect).

Middle: Milagros (almost 2) in green and Nicole (1) in red. They don't care much for each other at all, hence the less than cheery faces. They constantly see eachother as competition--whether it be for toys, attention, or being held.

Bottom: Ezequiel (11) (the one I'm somehow going to bring home with me) presenting me with the day's flowers.

I'm enjoying my meals here, however I worry sometimes about my health as the staple food is beef. Beef cooked in the oven, beef on a grill, beef over the stove, breaded and fried beef. I don't think they really discriminate, as long as dinner at one point was a cow. This is all often accompanied by fried eggs and large amounts of salt. Luckily Raquel makes a mean fruit salad, though my immediate love for it probably has something to do with a more or less even fruit-to-sugar ratio.

Seeing a need to take action, today at the park I started a giant game of Tag. I still don´t know what it's called in Spanish. The kids, being used to "dumbing things down" for me, call it "the game where you run and touch people". Seeing an opportunity to teach some English that I knew the kids would enjoy practicing, I taught them to say "YOU CAN´T CATCH ME!". They taught me how to say the same thing in Spanish, and for the rest of the morning we passed the time by running around and taunting each other. I certainly got the exercise I was looking for--I haven´t played the game where you run and touch people for that long since elementary school. Much better than running laps or on a treadmill. They all thought it was hilarious when I got all flushed from the heat and the running around. (Unfortunately the temperature suddenly jumped up about 40 degrees today). None of THEM ever turned bright red, so they didn't see why I should either.

Leaving has gone from hard to almost impossible. When I start to head out they jump all over me and beg me to stay. Apparently they don't have school tomorrow, so I'll probably stay much longer. El Señor asked me what I eat at home and if I'd be willing to cook for them one day. I couldn't say yes fast enough... I'll have to get to the grocery store one of these days. I can't wait.

I went out browsing around the city this evening. I've been wanting to do a little bit of shopping ever since I got here, but I found I no longer had any interest in the pretty shirts and shoes I had seen while window shopping on Saturday. I came home with only a bag full of crayons, paper, balls, and building blocks.

I'm so excited!

Cierra tus ojos

Today it was once again Gabriel who made up a game and enlisted me as his opponent. He crafted an airplane out of a sheet of paper which we then threw back and forth, the object being to get it past the other person. The only other rule was that any time you succeeded you had to yell the word "GOAAAAAL!" as loud as possible. He acted as quite the MC, taking way too much pleasure in saying things like "¡OHHH... Y Ella perdió la oportunidad que tenía!" [OHHH.. And she lost the chance she had!] every time I missed a shot. The video down at the bottom is a clip from the game.

Later we went to the park again. This time they gave me 3 of the girls--the babies and the six year old--to take too. Solamon had to stay home since he didn't finish his homework, so I ended up taking eight kids in total. That was scary. Every few minutes or so I´d freak out a little bit and frantically look around the park counting "Uno dos tres cuatro cinco seis siete ocho!" I must have counted to eight eighty times from the time we got there to the time we left. Two 1-year olds, a 3-year old, a 6-year old, an 8-year-old, a 10-year old, an 11-year old, and a 13-year old...that´s a lot of ducklings to keep in tow.

Each day so far, the boys have picked out flowers for me on the way to the park. Yesterday they just handed them to me, but today they said "¡Cierra tus ojos!" [Close your eyes!], and when I did they tucked flowers into my jacket pockets. They are so adorable. The only "vase" I had was a roll of toilet paper [which El Señor gave me to "clean up any messes"...?] So, I set it on a swing and put my new flowers inside and Voila! My new header.

I'm trying to be patient with my Spanish. It's hard not to just expect to be able to understand everything after only a couple of days here, or at least to want to. I am definitely improving... When the boys want to tease me they talk really fast, knowing I won't understand. Today though, there was a small victory. I asked Zacharia where his shoes were as we were leaving the park and he said [¡Se fue en un viaje!] just about as fast as he could. I wish I had my camera ready to capture his expression when I replied "No, no se fue en un viaje" [No they did not go on vacation]. If looks could talk, his would have said "Crap! She understood me?!!" The rest of the kids found it all pretty hilarious.

I walked them to school at around 1 and then found the closest bus stop. It wasn´t the stop nor the bus number that Veronica had shown me how to take, but as far as I could tell it was going the same general direction and I was feeling adventurous. I live in "el centro" or "downtown" (that´s what they call it, but there aren´t any buildings taller than two stories). El centro is set up like a grid, so though the streets actually have names and it isn´t quite as easy to navigate as St. Petersburg or NYC, it isn´t very hard either. I got off the bus when I saw streets I recognized and walked the rest of the way home, stopping at a store on the way. I asked today if there was anything they needed and they said that they were all out of diapers and almost out of soap. 3 packages of diapers, 4 bars of cute bright green soap with alligators on it, and a bottle each of shampoo and conditioner for me all came out to less than 9 dollars. Dealing with pesos with a budget in dollars is much more fun than Euros were last month.

Once again looking forward to tomorrow!

And now, as promised:

"El Avión de Papel"

Tía Sarah

Today was wonderful. I woke up at 7:15 and ate my daily breakfast of corn flakes and milk in time for Veronica to pick me up at 7:30 and take me to the kid´s home. It´s called Arco Iris de Sueños, or Rainbow of Dreams. Sounds better in Spanish, as I always say. It´s just me there for the first two weeks until another girl is coming. Charlie is at another location coaching fútbol and Lucas and Shauina are teaching English in a school. I am SO happy with my placement though. They´re sort of guiding me into this--today Veronica gave me a ride there and Marcello gave me a ride back home. Tomorrow Veronica is going to come here again in the morning and accompany me on the bus so I can see where to take it from and to. And then after that, I´m on my own to navigate my way there the rest of the 6 weeks. Not like the past year hasn´t accustomed me to navigating mass transit systems...

Alicia and a man who all the kids call ¨El Señor¨ run the place. Alicia is from here and El Señor is from Brazil. He asked if I could say anything to him in Portuguese, and was extremely delighted by my offerings of ¨Estou cheia disso!¨ [I´m sick of this!] and ¨O que voce quizer¨ [Whatever you want.] He even noted that my pronunciation was better than most foreigners (Obrigada Varandas!) They served the 6 boys breakfast and then went back in their room and closed to door, telling me that they were going to go drink tea and they´d see me again at 11:30 (This was at about 8.) This seemed kind of strange to me, but I didn´t mind. After some of the experiences I had babysitting, 6 boys between the ages of 3 and 13 was a piece of cake. I thought they were just going back to sleep. It wasn´t until later that I found out that there are 4 girls in the home too (Carolina, 14? Michaela, 6? Milagros, 1 and Nicole, 1)that they had while I had all the boys. Because of this I don´t know much of anything about Carolina, Milagros, and Nicole. Michaela´s loquacity ensured I learned a little b it about her, though.

Ezequiel (11) is already my favorite, which is a surprise to me since I usually have the biggest soft spot for little kids more in the range of 1-5. He´s so smart, he´s always the one that spends the most time trying to make sure I understand what they are saying, and he shows so much responsibility whenever one of the younger ones is upset. Today when I was drawing with them, 2 of the boys wanted me to take their pictures home with me. The one at the top of the page on the left with the big backwards S is from Ezequiel. The other one is from Zachariah (13) which might be more endearing if it didn´t read from top to bottom ¨Devil, Satan, Sarah¨. It wasn´t all in succession mind you, it was just the only blank space left he could find for my name! I think. I guess he has a bit of a dark side. I really don´t know the stories of most of these kids. I know that Fabiano (10), Salomon (8), Michaela, Tutui (3), and Milagros (in English, ¨Miracles¨) are all brothers and sisters from a drug addict Mother, but no one told me anything about the rest of them. Or maybe they did, I don´t know. No one in the house at all speaks a word of English, except Ezequiel knows some numbers and Michaela can say ¨Bye Bye¨. Those are the only two who are interested in English at all. Michaela as soon as she met me climbed up on my lap and began a succession of questions, each beginning ¨¿Cómo se dice en inglés....¨ (How do you say in English...¨) I had a hunch it was all going in one ear and out the other, so since I had already told her that ¨papel¨ is ¨paper¨, I decided to test it. The conversation went something like:

¨¡Michaela! ¿Cómo se dice en inglés papel?¨

[Michaela! How do you say papel in English?]

¨¿Eh...en inglés?¨

[Um...in English?]

¨Sí, en inglés.¨

[Yes, in English.]

¨¡Pues, no sé! ¡Sabes que no hablo inglés!¨

[Well, I don´t know! You know I don´t speak English!]

Oh well. She´s the lucky one, anyway. Apparently she´s getting adopted soon. It´s sad that the siblings will be all split up, but I suppose it would be hard for anyone to adopt all five. Most of the kids are very small, but Fabiano has quite the belly. When I met him for the first time, Alicia, one of the adults who run the home, whispered none too quietly [ÉL COME MUCHO!!!] in case I hadn´t noticed said belly. He´s a good sport about it though. When we went to the park, the other kids quickly realized that none of them could weigh me down on the see-saw and started yelling GET FABIANO!!!!!! They squealed with delight when he got on and shot me straight up to the top. And with even more delight when they realized I was more or less at his mercy to get down. Luckily, they´re good kids, and can´t resist a ¨Por favor¨ from me.

Salomon doesn´t talk quite as much as the rest of them, but he has a perma-grin that you just can´t help but smile back at. I don´t know too much about him yet except that after he won some game we were playing he screamed SOOOOOYYYYY EL GANADOOOOOOOR!!!! [IIII AM THE WIIIIIINNNNER!]. It was so adorably out of character. Or maybe he´s just being shy because he doesn´t know me yet, I don´t know, but if he is, he´s the only one. These kids love you the second you walk in without even thinking about it. They´d wrap their arms around me and just say SARAH SARAH SARAH SARAH! Gabriel, Ezequiel, Salomon, and Zachariah sat me down for a questioning. They wanted to know where I´m from, how old I am, when my birthday is, my mother´s name, whether or not I´m married, and if so how many babies do I have. I told them I wasn´t married, so then they wanted to know what at what age I plan to get married. I replied that I didn´t know. Gabriel advised me that he believes 22 is the best age to get married so I thanked him and told him I´d think that over. He seemed satisfied. But something tells me that none of the 4 of them would care too much for Jonathan :]

Gabriel was king of the spontaneous embrace. He´d give me a hug whenever he could. He was most interested in roping me into their games, which I didn´t mind. It´s amazing what little these kids have in comparison to kids back home. At the house, they have sticks and 3 marbles to play with. It´s a tragedy felt all over the home whenever one of them escapes into a crack in the wall or under the refrigerator (purchased just recently through fundraising by a girl who volunteered there 2 years ago) which lasts until the precious marble is recovered. The game today that Gabriel and I played was simple, but we had a good time. He´d place one marble against the wall. We´d sit back about 5 feet and take turns rolling our marbles, trying to hit the one against the wall. The first one to hit it 10 times was EL GANADOOOOOR! (or LA GANADOOORA! in my case). It was great.

Tutui is absolutely adorable, when, as I´ve noticed is common among 3 year olds, he´s not screaming in a corner or refusing to go somewhere. I almost never understand what he is saying, as his Spanish sounds like nothing more than mumbles to me. But his little face makes my heart melt. At any given time the kids all call me one of 3 things: Sarah, ¨Tía¨ [aunt], or ¨La chica que tiene ojos verdes y amarillos como un gato¨ [The girl who has green and yellow eyes like a cat]. They´re a little bit obsessed with my eyes, as all of theirs, along with most that they´ve seen, are brown. I don´t know how I´ll ever be able to leave them now. The only way I could today was by promising that I´d be back tomorrow...

Though keeping track of 6 boys both in the house and at the park was a challenge, we had such a fun time. It was so wonderful to see them laugh. It just about broke me to pieces this morning when I had to watch them eat warm milk and a piece of bread for breakfast. I want to make them pancakes and eggs tomorrow, or at least buy some fun cereal...but I know that that´d forever ruin milk and bread for them. Maybe you ought to get David´s extra bed ready Mom, because I already want so so badly to bring Ezequiel home with me. I´ll put up pictures of them all soon, but I wanted to get to know them a little bit before bombarding them with flashes in their faces.

I absolutely can´t wait to go back tomorrow.

Con título :]

Not a whole lot to report today. Sundays seem to be pretty much days to relax. Dinner last night was fun. It´s kind of like I´ve been adopted into two families, the first being the one I live with, and the other being Veronica´s. At the barbecue at Veronica´s last night her husband, parents, siblings, and all the volunteers were there. Like I was saying about lack of subtlety... One woman, I´m not really clear on who she was..either a sister or a friend of Veronica, told me I was very beautiful so I must have good genes and did I have any brothers available for marriage that she could meet. She must have been about 27-30...I told her I have a 21 year old brother and a 16 year old brother thinking that would answer her question but on the contrary she wondered about uncles.

Today I´ve been catching up on sleep, reading, and watching tv in Spanish. Pretty easy day, but work starts at 730 am tomorrow...

Open 25 Hours

Among today´s sights of interest were an intersection juggler and a store that´s open MORE than all of the time. There´s this guy--I can´t yet say whether he´s a well known neighborhood personality as this is my first day here--that was hanging out near this intersection in town early this afternoon. Everytime the light turned red for one side, he´d walk over and stand in front of the cars and start juggling. I didn´t see a bucket or bag for tips or anything either. I don´t know if I just missed it or if that´s just his idea of a good time. ThenI saw this store...well you saw the picture up there. Probably confused you as much as it did me.

We had orientation this morning, wherein the program coordinator (Veronica) and her assistant (Carolina) laid out a few policies about our projects and offered to answer any questions we had and so on. I´ve noticed that subtlety isn´t really a social concern here. Carolina pointed right at me in the middle of the whole thing and said ¨SARAH. YOU will attract unwanted stares from men¨ to which I wasted no time in replying ¨How do you know they´re unwanted?¨ (Just kidding Jon) No, I didn´t say that. Anyway I guess she didn´t see the need to address the warning to anyone else.

At orientation they gave us ¨Chipás¨ which I´m happy to report taste almost exactly like Pão de queijo. I am very excited about that. From what they´ve told me so far there seems to be a lot of similarities between Argentinean food and Brazilian food. Though, the culture guidebook I bought before I left warns me against ever comparing Argentina to Brazil. Not that Brenno isn´t a walking talking example of the reason for this practice. It was kind of funny, Carolina was asking everyone what they were doing after this placement. Charlie (29, England) is traveling all over Argentina afterwards. She was very excited for him, telling him all about the great experiences he was going to have. Lucas (18, Brooklyn) is going to Rosario, so she told him all about that city and how wonderful it was. I said um..I´m going to Rio de Janeiro after this. She said ¨Oh. Nice. Anyway, like I was saying...¨ Apparently the day just recently Argentina beat Brazil in Olympic fútbol was regarded somewhat as a holiday--school was cancelled and everything. I was talking to one guy today telling me all about how ¨Brazil deserved to lose, they really did¨. Anyway, basically the whole point of this paragraph was to get Brenno all worked up because that´s a lot of fun.

So Charlie is from England. He likes to make all these jokes about other Europeans that the rest of us don´t understand. They were telling a story about a girl volunteer they had one time who was a problem, and when they mentioned she was Norwegian, Charlie started laughing exclaiming ¨Norway?! Well THAT explains it doesn´t it!¨ The rest of us were just like No..no Charlie not really. He had made some joke about the Spanish and some other about the French that were equally lost on us I think. Then Lucas likes to wink at me every time somebody mentions something about Americans or the US, so we´ll pray that gets old.

My host family is extremely nice. I have a ¨mom¨ (Raquel) and two ¨sisters¨ (Maura is 21 and Jelena is 19). I haven´t actually met Jelena on account of she spends all of her time with her boyfriend. Maura is actually out with her boyfriend right now too. Raquel and Maura were joking about how Raquel gets so jealous of their boyfriends. I said yeah..my parents can probably relate. Raquel and Maura don´t speak very much English at all, so all of our conversations are in Spanish. Apparently Jelena loves English and can speak it well, but I wouldn´t know. It´s good though. I need to practice. Veronica´s (the program coordinator) mom teaches private Spanish lessons and the other volunteers said that she´s very very good so that´s something I might look in to. I think they cost the equivelant of about 7 dollars an hour. Everything is really cheap here, as long as it´s not imported from Europe or the US. I bought a really nice Spanish dictionary (with definitions in Spanish too--I figured that could be my next step up from the pocket English-Spanish one) for about 4 dollars today.

Anyway, back to what I was starting to talk about last paragraph--the family is really nice. Almost too nice. It´s kind of more like I have 2 personal maids here. They cook for me and won´t let me help, yell at me when I try to do the dishes..basically just want me to sit around and relax all of the time. I listened to them at breakfast and stopped washing the dishes but at lunch I just couldn´t do it... I washed them anyway. Hopefully they´re just being nice and won´t actually be offended if I try to clean up after myself. Afterall, they say they want me to feel like part of the family, but I think I´ll find it hard to ever take the parenthesis away when I type ¨mom¨ and ¨sisters¨if they always insist on treating me like royalty.

Anyway, I think dinner is soon, so I should be heading off. There´s a computer right here in the house that they say I can use whenever I want though, so I should be able to post often. And no Dad, I wasn´t counting you twice. The third knows who he is and so do you :]

Ciao!

Sarah

Estoy en Argentina!

I've been abroad for only a matter of hours and already I've seen the Argentinian version of Richard Gere, a weird public urination display, and, much to my delight, my own breath.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows my temperature preference that the last of those excited me the most. Well, I guess even for those who don't know, you could guess. I mean, as far as the first one goes, Richard Gere might be more exciting if I was I don't know 50, and also it'd be kind of weird if the second one excited me at all, so by default the last one must take the cake. But I digress. Now that I'm south of the Equator, the seasons are backwards, so winter is just making the transition into spring. I'd guess it's somewhere in between 55 and 65 degrees outside and it's wonderful.

I actually saw Señor Gere before ever leaving the US--he sat next to me on the plane on the way over. I could have sworn it was really him until he spoke (telling me as soon as he sat down to "please be-uh quiet if he is sleep-sleep") and thus revealed his thick accent. For all I know the accent wasn't even real, merely a ploy to deflect unwanted attention--but anyway if the guy is going to go through all that effort of utilizing a fake accent every time he wants to say something, I'm not about to harass him about his true identity.

Buenos Aíres as it turns out has two airports, and go figure I landed at one and have to depart out of the other, which necessitated about an hour long cab ride. It was during this ride that I saw a guy relieving himself on the side of the highway. There was tree cover about 15 feet back, but using it apparently wasn't a concern of his. The weirder thing is that there wasn't a car stopped anywhere near there, so he wasn't a desperate motorist or anything...I found myself wondering what then possibly could have brought him there to do that. The other peculiar thing about the highways there is the way they go about discouraging graffiti on the overpasses. This is done by, in essence, beating the would-be graffitiers to the punch. Every single pillar had a huge painting of what resembles a No Smoking sign, only rather than a cigarette in the middle there was an oversized paintbrush being grasped by a hand. Underneath each one it said NO PINTE (Don't Paint). The irony is that these mandates are far uglier than any graffiti I've ever seen, which is compounded by the fact that they for some reason see the need paint this on not just one but every single pillar. Maybe they don't care for aesthetics so much as enforcing rules.

My cab driver's English was limited to "hello" and "thank you," so I got the opportunity right away to practice my Spanish. So far it seems the majority here doesn't speak English, which is good news for me--it always seems awkward to try and speak broken Spanish to someone who speaks fluent English. I understood most of what he said, and his solution to my limited knowledge of Spanish was to A) to speak slowly (which unfortunately I still need) and B) use lots of synonyms. This should have been helpful, but it seems like every time he did it it'd be either unnecessary because I knew both the words he tried, or futile because I knew neither of them. For example, he said I should have taken the public bus (right, like I wanted to navigate that in my first 10 minutes here) because it's "más barato...más economico." That translates to telling me that it's "cheaper...more economic." I can't give an example of a situation in which I didn't know either of the words, because it's hard to remember words you don't know, but you get the picture.

I arrived at this airport at around 930 am, and my connecting flight to Posadas doesn't leave until 840 pm, so I've been hanging out in the terminal Tom Hanks-style. Okay, not quite, I have some money and was able to buy myself 4 of the most delicious crossaints I've ever eaten, so no crackers with mustard for me (gross). But Fun Fact--I learned today that Spanish doesn't take the French like us but actually has its own word for them: "medialunas," or "half moons." Then my linguistic-oriented brain takes that fact and thinks about how we also sometimes call them "crescent rolls" and also refer to that sort of moon as a "crescent moon," so they're all really related in a way.

I'm trying to immerse myself in this language as much as possible for the next 6 weeks, so the first thing I did when I got here was buy a novel in Spanish. I'm on a reading kick like I haven't been since like 8th grade, reading maybe 2-3 books a week, so I figure I might as well kill two birds with one book. I sat down at a café for a couple of hours and while I ate my half-moons I worked my way through a few chapters of it. I know enough Spanish that I could understand the basis of what was going on, but I kept my pocket Spanish-English dictionary at hand. The trouble was, I found that most of the words I didn't know weren't contained in my dictionary. A little bit frustrating at first, but I decided it was okay with me--just means that I'm more advanced than a pocket dictionary and need to graduate to a more thorough one. Cool.

That's about it thus far. I'll be really surprised if anyone actually read all this. Okay, anyone in addition to the 3 people whom I KNOW inhaled every word... (Hi Mom & Dad...)

I don't know when my next access to internet will be but I'll write more and reply to comments as soon as I can.

Miss everyone!