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.