“Can I Tell You About BEAUTY?!”

So I’ve obviously been bad at updating this blog with some of the fun stories that have occurred while here at the hogar so I thought I’d just go ahead and tell a few of them.

So this has happened a couple times and I wanted to share it with all of you because it makes me smile every time. We take some of the boys out on bikes after dinner, to Posas Verdes, to get drinks and treats occasionally. By the time we start or return, it’s usually dark. This is one of my favorite things because as we ride bikes or walk in the pitch black there are TONS of fireflies on either side of us as we walk. You can’t really see too far ahead of yourself so you have to either look out for the potholes in the torn up road or get a nice surprise when you bike through them. It’s a blast to hear all the laughing that goes on as we ride through the dark, beautiful to see all of the fireflies on either side of you and then absolutely breathtaking to look up at the countless stars above you.

This past Sunday I made ratatouille Stromboli for dinner with Rita and of course, knowing me, there was music on…BLARING! As we were finishing up dinner I decided, that after cooking for 2 and a half hours, we should celebrate the amazing food that awaited us in the oven. I then put on “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root (SHOUT OUT TO MARITA!) and we began to dance around the kitchen pulling Regina in to dance with us. A moment where I sat there and was just thankful that I’m here with some amazing people who will challenge me and let ME shine!
The other night I was walking up to the social work office, with Grace, and Oscar (one of the boys) stopped there with the light shining behind him and his silhouette standing before us with his arms OUTSTRETCHED for a hug. Definitely a moment that just made me smile, not a word was said… afterwards we just continued on.

On Monday and Friday nights we play soccer, after dinner, with the boys. Sometimes one of the padrinos, Padrino Luis, joins in. The electricity here is CONSTANTLY going out and so this past week it went out both Monday and Friday nights while we were playing soccer. We then cannot see a thing so are forced to stop however sometimes some of us stick around and still try and play or we just sit around and admire the thousands of lightning bugs around us and just lay on the ground and look at the stars.

Every Tuesday night we have "Silent Night". After prayer there is no music, talking and for this month we decided as a community to sacrifice the use of lights on Tuesdays and Fridays. It makes Tuesday nights really fun because I write all of my letters by candlelight. :)

Anyways, this past Tuesday we had some visitors. About 2 months ago one of the dogs here had two puppies in a shack behind our house. It's been really cool to watch their growing process (opening their eyes and learning how to walk). Two of my community members went to grab the puppies because they were yelping and they brought them into the house to play. We all sat around in the candlelight and fed the puppies some cornflakes and played with them. TONS of fun!

Our boys are VERY intelligent. They always love inventing things out of stuff laying around. One of our fans broke the other day so we threw it out in our trash. I was in the social work office the other day doing some work when my community member, Alan, came to tell me I had to come see something. I walk out of the office to see one of the boys, Gerson David, with his head over the ledge of the patio and a chord plugged into the side of one of the padrino's house. As I got closer I saw that he had taken our fan (with the part that had the 0,1,2,3 speed option and the little motor with a piece of plastic pointing out for the front of the fan to go on which was missing) and had attached a corn cob to the little point sticking out of the fan. He was using the speeds to dig a hole into the ground with the corn cob!

Another one of our boys, Mendoza, loves to play imaginary sports with you. He will pretend to kick a soccer ball to you and when you return it he'll gracefully receive it or pretend it has bounced off the ground or off of a wall or some object around and he has been known to entertain himself (along with volunteers) for hours upon end. These kids are AMAZING!

Wednesday night is community activity night and this past Wednesday our community decided to play sardines, in the dark, in the house. If you don't know what sardines is, it is when one person goes to hide and the other people have to search for that person. Once you find the person hiding you have to hide with them. You can imagine how entertaining this was with 8 full grown adults. We blared music allowing people to hide without hearing where and would search for people when the songs were done, singing along to each song of course! :)