Pick up games and election time.

I had a lot of fun this past weekend with the kids in Pacasmayo.  Friday night I got there around 8 and we played some card games until it was bed time.  Saturday we played soccer all morning, then decided to go to the park and look for a pick-up game with some of the neighborhood kids.  They quickly got a game going that was pretty much kids from the orphanage against some of the kids from the surrounding areas.  Little did the other kids know that the boys from Casa de Paz have been training together for the past year and recently I've been turning them into super humans through the form of bets.  My boys were able to make quick work of the other kids even though the other team had mainly older players.  To add to the pummeling Yhonson gave one of the older kids an accidental bloody nose.  Afterward all the boys were chest bumping and carrying on about how big of a whooping they gave the other team.  It was in my opinion a really good bonding experience for them, because more often than not they are always pitted up against each other which leads to a lot of unnecessary fighting and bickering.  I am definitely wanting to take them out again for this activity.

Sunday morning there was no church because it was election day.  I guess two things that you can't do on election day is drink alcohol and go to church.  There is a day long prohibition where no one is supposed to sell or consume any alcoholic beverage.  With not having church it gave us another opportunity to get out of the house.  So I took the older boys to the river to swim.  Sam took the older girls out walking on the beach Saturday so the boys were wanting to go somewhere too.  They had a lot of fun but I wish I had been feeling better so I could've joined them.  I was still having a couple stomach problems that were compounded by my choice in Mexican dinning the night before.

This past weekend I also came up with a behavioral chart for the boys house so that there would be no more confusion as to who can watch tv/play video games on the weekends.  I did this because there wasn't a very good discipline/reward system in place.  What was happening is that one or some of the kids were behaving badly and the house moms would say, "we are taking the t.v's out".  This not only punished unfairly the kids who were behaving well, it also led to confusion for the kids who were being punished.  As they did not always know exactly what they did wrong so they could correct their behavior.  So the chart I made up has a way of daily tracking six different areas for each kid; general behavior, completion of chores, making bed in the morning, being ready for school in the morning, doing homework, receiving good grades.  When I come on Friday night I can quickly see who has or has not earned the right to watch movies and play video games and why or why not.  The kids can also see all this too as it is posted in a large format for all to see.

And for the picture of the post, here is a photo I snapped of Pedro doing his homework at Hogar de Esperanza.