Acostumbrando

Last night I went to the girls´home and played with them until Sarah and Kat came. Since it was their last day with them, we had a mini-party and gave them pie and lollipops. The other day this girl Mariluz (sp?) asked me how long I was going to be in Perú and I told her five more weeks and then I had to return to mi propio país and she said, "El Perú no es tu país?" and it made me so sad. Every so often one of the kids will ask about when we´re leaving and if we´re ever going to come back and I never know what to say. I love Perú and plan on returning someday, but who knows if the girls will still be there. I feel really guilty sometimes having such a stable support system in the States of friends and family when these girls (and boys) grow up having strangers filter in and out of their lives constantly. I´m not looking forward to having to say goodbye to them in a few weeks.

When I got home I got my clothes back from the lavandería (favorite part of the day) and then went back to get ready to go out. The new girl who lives with my host family is named Jackie and she´s 19 and goes to Duke (though she´s from Chicago). She´s really nice but she greeted me in English when we first met. After talking to my host mom I found out that Jackie speaks Spanish pretty well, so later I asked her if she would speak to me in Spanish and she said of course. She said that she obviously feels more comfortable talking in English and so she tends to fall back on it when she has the opportunity, which is understandable.

Anyway, I invited her to come out to dinner with me to celebrate Sarah´s and Kat´s last night in Perú since they both leave for Bolivia today. I think she was grateful to meet more people in the city and have a chance to speak a little English.

This morning I went to the boys´house and for the first time successfully helped a boy finish all of his homework. Wow. They had to write the names of the fifteen saints of Corpus Cristi and write sentences about each of them. Somehow I remembered 11 of those saints (?!) so I helped them with that and then they had to come up with their own sentences. This one boy, Ronald, I think is dyslexic so he wrote a few of the names down and then gave up and wouldn´t talk to me from that point on. Sarah and I looked through one of his notebooks and found that on a bunch of pages, the teacher had a stamped a crying face because he hadn´t done his homework. I can´t even imagine how discouraging that would be for a child who clearly struggles just to complete his homework. I talked to him for around twenty minutes telling him that if he wants my help I´m more than willing to give it to him, but there´s not a whole lot I can do if he refuses to speak to me. Any suggestions on how to handle this situation??

After that, we went outside and one of the profesoras had brought in a kitten (!!!) so some of the boys were playing with her. They were being kind of rough so Kat and Sarah had me explain to them that kittens can startle and have heart attacks pretty easily. That sort of got them to calm down, but eventually I had to take the cat away. Oh boys.

Then we rounded up all the boys in the comedor and gave them cake and lollipops (we do this a lot around here...) and told them that it was Kat´s and Sarah´s last day. One of the boys, Kevin, was being a little jerk and kept trying to take more cake than everyone else. Luckily I know how to say more to them than "No!" so I helped Kat and Sarah explain to him that that wasn´t okay. Still, I can´t help but love the boys.

Chau,
Adrien

P.S. How come no one is leaving me any comments? I want to know what you all think!