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!