A Request for a Basketball?

This morning began like the others with devotions and my cafecito, but changed drastically when we headed to the Toddler House and in their playground area found some (what Alina & I think were) wild turkeys!  There were about 9-10 of them.  It's so neat to keep your eyes open around here...you just never know what you're going to see.

Wild turkeys this morning in the toddler yard

When we arrived at the Toddler House, we went through the routine of cutting the vegetables, serving breakfast, and doing the dishes.  Because today was Tuesday, I had to head to school with Alina to work with the children that are in 4th grade that cannot yet read.  We work with these children 1-on-1, and since I had gotten them started on beginning sounds of consonants with the vowels, the Nacho book that Karen lent me over the weekend helped very nicely to supplement with that.  We went page by page, first combining the 'm' with the 5 vowels and then reading sentences that only had vowels and the consonant 'm' in it.  The next page had the consonant 'p' on it, and combining it with vowels and even the letter 'm'.  Some students needed to stop here, some went on to the 'l' page which was next.  When we got to the end of our 20 minutes together, I copied the sentences down from the page we had left off onto a partial sheet of notebook paper and asked them to practice the sentences today, tomorrow and Thursday morning, so that when we got together again on Thursday, we could go from there...otherwise we'd have to review even more.  To each student who made an honest effort the entire 20 minutes (and all began eager to learn), I gave a chili-coated mango sucker...which made their smile widen even more!

After we finished at the school, we headed back to the Toddler House.  I gave some clothes that I had received from a coworker to a few of the teen moms who we thought they might fit.  One girl was so excited that she rushed to her room to try it on and when she came out, the red dress fit perfectly!  All of them were very excited to receive new clothes and said Thank You with a smile.  It's so nice to see people so appreciative.  We served lunch and then I headed with Alina to the tienda to get her a snack of chips and soda because she was STILL hungry (growing pre-teen, expecting another growth spurt soon).

Alina decided to stay in the big girls yard until they headed to school, while I went down to talk to Andi in the office about checking to see if they have room for us next year.  The neat thing is...next year we are able to come down for FIVE weeks!  Pretty soon I'll be working up to the entire summer!  I'm just so excited about that.

When we headed back to the Toddler House, a team member came by to help me with Helen and her speech.  Helen is 2 years old (I believe, or just turned 3) and Karla says that she doesn't hear Helen talk at all and is wondering if she's delayed.  As a high school mathematics teacher, this is completely not my area of expertise, so I approached one of the men in charge of the team if he had anyone whose career was speech pathology or early childhood education who might be able to help me.  A lady named LeAnn came down and said she was certified in special needs and had a bunch of ideas to help me get started!

Alina spent most of her time playing with a little boy whose mom ran away from the orphanage sometime between last year and this year.  We knew his mom and had even given her a Packer shirt (you can find a picture of her in last year's posts).  For some reason, she decided to take off and leave her son behind.  His name is Noe (Spanish for Noah), but everyone calls him 'Chino' because his eyes make him look slightly Chinese.  His mom was nicknamed China.

Alina and Chino (Noe)

When it was time for supper, we helped serve supper and then I did the dishes while Alina helped the big toddler girls to shower.  When dishes were done, I went in to Zelenes' room to play with the big toddler boys.  Ana approached me and asked if we had a basketball that we could give her, to which I replied that we had THREE basketballs and I'd have Alina bring her one tomorrow and show her some drills.

When we left for our room, we stopped by the 'cancha' (playground area and soccer field) that's in front of the school, which is where the Big Girls were.  Alina played soccer with them for a while before they had to head in for the night.  I just sat by the sidelines chatting with some of the other girls that didn't care to play.  When we got home, Alina ate the rest of the super-size cinnamon roll (yep, growth spurt) and then went to the Team House to get 2 boxes (yep, you read that right, boxes) of milk from Claire (a volunteer from Ireland) since Claire had said that she's not able to drink the milk here.  And that was pretty much it for Tuesday!