Playing Professional Futbol Players?

Today was another great day at work. When Paula isn’t there I get to spend the whole day with the kids. One of the workers had me take a picture on my camera of Oliver and wanted me to send them to her, so I have to try and figure out if I can develop some of my pictures for her. She is so funny because she talks so incredibly fast and thinks that I understand everything perfectly. I normally can get the gist of what she is saying by her movements, but I definitely don’t understand a lot of what she says. I was able to talk with her a little more today and learned that her grandparents were from Spain and that she has a lot of family in Mexico. She’s been working in the orphanage for 14 years and has seen a lot of kids come through. The home is for kids 0-18 years of age. Marita is only 8 months old, and Oliver is 6 months old.

Yesterday I was feeling like I didn’t have enough hands to go around and that I couldn’t hold everyone at once. Today was a really wonderful day in that regard. Nelzo wasn’t there today, he was learning something, or was at school somewhere, although I couldn’t quite figure out what Rosa was telling me. Only having 4 kids made a huge difference considering they’re all around the same age! Another boy named Manuel came in to the nursery today. I think that he sleeps there at night but during the day he is in another room in the hogar. He came in today because he was sick and just sat on the floor, wouldn’t say anything or really look at anybody. I went over and started rubbing his back and asked if he liked it. He said yes, and he got a lot less tense the more that I rubbed his back. Eventually they turned the TV on in the nursery and he fell asleep lying on the floor and later got moved to his bed. After playing with Maria for a little while, it was time for her bottle, which she drank in her bed and then she fell asleep. Jenny finished her bottle, so while Luis and Oliver were drinking their bottles, I got to hold her and rock her and eventually she fell asleep on my lap as well and so I put her in the crib. Then I got to rub Luis’s back while he finished his bottle and he fell asleep as well. That left me with Oliver! I had been sad because Oliver is always in his crib and the times that I’ve taken him out he’s managed to hit his head on something and the workers put him back in the crib. He didn’t end up falling asleep but I got to hold him and play with him for over an hour until it was time for lunch. He’s got such an incredibly cute laugh!

Here's Maria Sleeping...Too Cute!

I have a video of the nursery where I spend most of my day. I was trying to think about the beds and the kids and I think there are 15 or 16 beds/cribs to sleep in.

After work and lunch we had a speaker come in to tell us about the health care system and the education system in Guatemala. Some facts that really stood out to me:

About Health Care:
-There is 1 physician for every 1,000 people in Guatemala
-The number one cause of death is Pneumonia and behind that is upper respiratory infection (a lot of the other sicknesses are preventable)
-There are 23 languages in Guatemala and often times there is a language barrier/discrimination against the indigenous people leading to even poorer experiences and health care.

About Education:
-The new president announced free education for all children but there is not enough money to allow for this.
-There are hidden fees that families can’t pay and often times they need the children to stay home and work or take care of siblings
-There are often times close to 70 students in one class with one teacher and there are no special ed programs.

There is so much need here! I don’t feel like my investment and work in this country is done when my month is up, but we’ll see where life takes me!

We just got back from playing soccer with some of the professional soccer players of Xela. One of the staff, Gabby, is engaged to an old Super Chivo, and so he and a couple of other guys came and we played a pick up game. We played the volunteers versus the Super Chivos, except I got to play on the professional team for a little while. I don’t think I contributed too much, but I didn’t mess anything up. It was a lot of fun even though.

It’s dinner time again…

Here's me trying to guard the professional player. The one with the ball is the staff member's fiance.