Summertime! Sort of!

It's summertime (in the sense that school is out...not that the weather has changed all that much since we are on the equator...luckily that means it is still an average 68 degrees!), the rain has stopped for a few days this week, and work has picked up for Adam and I. Adam has been working the CASMUL camp (the 9-10 age group), making sure that the kids don't get too injured playing soccer and basketball, that nobody drowns during swim hour, and that on their field trip nobody gets left behind. He wasn't able to prevent one kid from getting pushed down a small hill today when they visited some recycling plant, but was there to console him when he got scratched up. 

Recently Eri and I have been working at the Orfanato Dorotea Carrion. We had previously done some workshops with the girls at the orphanage and this is also the location where we taught the 3 day course on origami to the teachers in the area back in March. The reason we have been working there more frequently in recent weeks is because one of our former colleagues from INFA Centro de Protección de Derechos got a job here and asked us to come back and work with the girls. 

The new sign that says this is a program of MIES-INFA (Ministerio de Inclusión Económica y Social & Instituto de la Niñez y la Familia) for at-risk girls and teens with the Centro de Proteccion de Derechos logo representing the diversity of children in Ecuador

In addition to doing origami with the girls once a week, we are also doing a class on discovering your inner and outer beauty and on Friday we are also doing recreational activities, including some teambuilding and trust exercises. This week was our first week doing the recreational activities, and we headed out to Parque Jipiro. It was a little challenging at first to get the girls to open up (I even had Anghy, the youngest girl at the orphange, hollering that the activities we were doing were feo...yeah thanks a lot!) but by the end they seemed to be enjoying themselves. I have 5 more weeks of classes and activities with them...so hopefully by then they will be more comfortable talking and sharing.

Trying to make the perfect square...blindfolded!

A couple of the girls from the group...and yes, my eyes are open!

Eri and I with the chicas...mostly teens and tiny Anghy in the front

Eri showing some dance moves while singing Shakira's Waka Waka

Eri and I have also continued to work at the Centro Comercial once a week. These kids are such fun and I think we are getting accustomed to their rowdiness. I remember the first few times we went there, I was like...whew, these kids wear me out! I might have even mentioned it in a previous blog post! One week we watched a Japanese animation film that was really cute and another week we spent an entire hour and a half making and decorating paper airplanes, and then having competitions to see whose plane went the farthest. The room we work in is two floors above the meat section of the Centro Comercial, so at times it stinks to high heaven! And the room we work in echos, so the yelling and hollering just reverberates against the walls. I included a few videos so you can see what fun we have!

And yes...in this video one of the kids is running while carrying another upside down...that's pretty normal (notice Eri not fazed at all!)

Of course working with all these kids comes with a trade-off. Adam and I have picked up a head cold and we are pointing fingers at each other in terms of who brought the bug home first! I swear it is Adam because he is exposed to 180 kids at the camp, whereas my group of kids at the 2 orphanages, the Centro Comercial, and the office maybe add up to 50 kids. Let's forget the fact that I had symptoms half a day earlier than Adam. Ha!

So this weekend will be spent recovering, sleeping, and probably some baking in between.