Sports and hugs (Carrie)

Jose outside our house after basketball class

Jose from House 2 has proven his ability to learn new sports along with tugging on all of our hearts.
Jose has always loved to play soccer with us whenever we play with the other boys and he's always been pretty good at it.This past week we began teaching some of the kids how to play basketball, which is something they don't play often at the Aldea. Jose was one of the best participants because he took the time to concentrate on the principals we were trying to teach him even if it meant the basketball didn't go through the hoop every time, he focused on shooting the ball correctly. Even after we were done with the activity he continued to practice. Another thing that we all love about Jose is how sweet he is. Almost every night we find our way to House 2 for hugs from Jose and the other boys before we leave for our house. Jose always offers hugs whenever you are leaving or randomly when he sees you and thinks you need one. I will definitely miss his sweet personality and tender nature when I am gone.

New Faces at the Aldea! (Carrie)

January 23 update from our intern Carrie:

There are 5 new children at the Aldea, all siblings and me (Carrie) a new volunteer!

There is a new boy at the Aldea named Victor who is 11 years old. The first day that I was at the Aldea, I was there by myself, without the volunteers from project trust. No one at the Aldea spoke English and my Spanish wasn’t very good but Victor spent the whole day trying to help me understand what he was saying and what the other kids were telling/asking me. He still continues to ask the other volunteers and I how to say things in English so he can say things to us that we understand. He’s a really good kid and is always trying to help us or get us to play sports. Also, he is a very quick learner. When we taught some of the kids the alphabet in English, he was able to pronounce the letters correctly and correctly identify them when we asked him in English to find a certain letter.

It was also Luchos birthday on Friday, he doesn’t quite understand yet that he’s another year older. When we asked him how old he was he kept telling us he was 2 but he’s 3 now.

We are so excited that our interns are already creating relationships with the kids! That's the first step to making a difference! Check back soon for more updates on the children and interns!

Thursday (Brian at Aldea)

Thursday we taught physical education. They all wanted to play volleyball instead of exercise and stretch out, so we combined the two. If you want the kids to do what you have planned, you have to bend and do what they want to do with them too. Obvious. We stretched and did some basic exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, and wall sits and did several reps of each. Then we played volleyball,

At 5:00ish, I met with Luis to do the Professionalism Class. When I came to help and ask if he was ready to build a resume, he said he had asked about help with homework. The homework he had done with Kayla had been lost or stolen or something! I didn’t know what to think. He’s a good kid but had lost or trashed his homework. I didn’t know if he was using the gringos to pawn off homework, but I helped him out.

While we were cooking in Casa 1, the men outside were harvesting avocados from the tree outside. One of the Tias asked me to get in a picture with the men so I did and shoved avocados up my t-shirt sleeves as biceps for the pic.

English class followed and I reviewed the fruit names and names of the month. We played “Fruit Basket” too to remember the names of the fruits and the kids ate it up!