Pics and vid

Trying to get a video of the baby cleaning, but then someone else wanted to try and steal the show

Happy Mother's Day! I bought all these flowers for ~$25

Lourdes showing off her new book with her sister Marciello

Smart baby, he played a solid game but I came through with the win right about the time he almost swallowed a pawn.

The incident

Sorry I'm getting a little lazy on updating the blog.  It's been a combination of writer's block, being busy, and just not too many interesting things going on.  Well I guess interesting as far as I see it.  But I hope to make it up to you all with this blog post, please enjoy. 

I guess the best story I have for you all this time is about my day teaching preschool.  The volunteers wanted to take the mothers out for an appreciation breakfast for mother's day.  That left Mike and I being substitute teachers for the preschool.  Luckily there are only three little boys that we are in charge of that it wasn't that big of deal, nothing to worry about right?  The morning started off great.  We tried singing some songs (not so great), reading some books, and going over the days of the week.  Then we did an art project that Sam taught me, which is putting a piece of paper into a box, dipping some marbles into paint, putting those marbles in the box, and then shaking the box all around.  It creates a modern work of art if you will.  After that was snack time and recess time. 

Something that you should know at this point which adds a little interest to the plot is that all three kids are going through some potty training.  So about every five minutes 45 seconds we have a kid saying that they need to go potty and go sit on the little plastic toilet over in the corner.  Recess time was winding down and one of the kids had to go poop, I had to go back and help him with that while Mike took the other two kids back to the classroom.  After he was done we walked back to the classroom and I saw a panicked looking Mike.  He said "Kevin, we got a situation here..." and I knew that things were about to get ugly quick.  "Jose Luis is missing and Alejandro just crapped all over the place."  I had to act quick to keep the situation from escalating, relying purely on impulse I dash out of the room to find Jose Luis, I encountered him banging on some big plastic water bottles under the stairwell.  Ok, child is safe, now what.  I bring him back to the room and Mike is looking a little flustered.  I look down at Alejandro who looks back at me with big sad brown eyes, then I look at the floor, the plastic toilet, his pants, his shoes, his underwear...everything was indeed covered in crap.  "Really? There's only five minutes left and this had to happen" I thought to myself as I pulled up Alejandro's pants for the time being.  We walked back to his house where we had to clean him up and change his clothes.  I couldn't find his clean underwear so he just went commando under some clean overalls. While he was changing I took his dirty underwear and washed it out in the sink, that was gross if you were wondering.  As we walked out of the house together all nice and clean one of the older girls spotted us and informed me that those were his Sunday overalls and he shouldn't be wearing them during the week.  So at this point I was a little frustrated so I handed him over to the older girl and told her to find his clothes then because those were the only ones I found.

When I returned to the room Mike was still cleaning the floor with a roll of paper towels and some 409 type of cleaner.  We just kind of looked at each other and sighed.  The mom's got back about five minutes later and so we happily dropped the kids back at home and it was Mike who summed up the situation by saying, "I  think I'm going to go wash my hands for about an hour."  

A while ago I had asked my mom to send me some warhead candy and she delivered.  If you don't know what warheads are then you're just like all the unsuspecting Peruvians I had the privilege of sharing with.  I asked for them specifically because I knew that the sour genre of candy doesn't exist here allowing for some fun times.  The volunteers here at Hogar de Esperanza had a great time with me watching kids pucker up and make sour faces the first time they tried them.  My favorite incident though was in church.  Last Sunday I put about ten of the warheads into my pockets and waited for some kids to start looking drowsy.   I would poke them one by one very quietly and then show them the candy and of course they wanted one.  So I gave them one but gave them the "shhh" no noise sign.  They would nod their head in agreement and then pop one of them into their mouths.  The complete surprise coupled with the forbidden noise making made for some pretty funny faces and muffled laughing.  Then the kid who tried it would wait and watch the next one try it.  Pretty hilarious.

Also this week, I went to a meeting on the topic of starting an adolescent home.  There is a group of people who want to start a home for adolescents that come from other orphanages.  This home would help the kids who have no chance of being adopted start getting their futures in line.  One of the biggest problems I think of any orphanage system is what do the kids do when they turn 18.  It is an obvious need in Peru and there are some pretty cool people who are getting together to try and help out.

Random but maybe interesting I guess you decide.  This last week I was given the task of helping our night guard learn how to use a computer to send emails.  He has been sleeping on the job we've found out so one of the ways we have decided to combat that is to have him send an email every 30 minutes so we can make sure he is awake (for at least 1 minute every 30 minutes I guess).  Well imagine trying to teach your mother how to send email then multiply it by 10.  The dude has never touched a computer in his life.  So I had the bright idea of setting up an outlook shortcut that would automatically fill out the email address and subject for him and all he would have to do is click send.  That was going well until for some reason our computer which needs to be reformatted started sending out multiple copies of the e-mail or missing some times etc..because of the outlook program not working right.  So then I had to show him how to use gmail.  It was hard enough showing him how to click on an icon and then click send, so filling out an entire email as you can imagine was even more difficult.  Well I guess I didn't train him as well as I should have because he woke me up this morning at 12:00, 2:30, and 5:00 am. because he couldn't get the email to send..... so back to the drawing board.

Also this week I saw a real live black widow spider when I was helping finish a rock and cement path from the orphanage to the school.  That was pretty cool I guess.

Hard week

Sorry I haven't written earlier this week.  I've been a little stressed out and haven't really been feeling like writing much.  I started off the week finding out that Luis, a kid who was sent to another orphanage in Cajamarca, died from a heart attack.  He had muscular dystrophy and was bound to a wheel chair, he was one of the kids that I took to school each morning for over two months.  He loved it when I would spend time with him because I would take him out of his wheelchair and let him lay in the grass and throw rocks, most everyone else was afraid to or not physically able to pick him up and let him roll around on the ground.

Another thing that was stressing me out was the trip to go get Yhonsons birth certificate.  Its a long trip, three days there and three days back.  One of those days are spent on a mule.  First the idea was that Gina and Carlos Augusto would go because Carlos knows the way, however it was decided that it wouldn't be proper because Carlos was married.  So then it was Gina and some other lady that went.  They didn't even make it to Trujillo before their bus was held up at gun point and everyone was robbed.  Luckily Gina had hid 750 soles in her bra so that wasn't taken, however a digital camera and 250 soles was.  So they returned to Pacasmayo to go get more money and they left again Tuesday night.  This time it was Gina and Avis that went. I am worried for Avis because she is older and the traveling isn't exactly safe.  However I called them last night and they are doing well, and someone offered to make the last leg of the journey on mule for them to recover the birth certificates so Avis didn't have to go on Mule.

Luis eating cake on his birthday

Luis always smiling.