January 4, 2016 Katie-Jo Dacey

What a day it’s been!

I’ve realized that the experience that I’ve had here in Guatemala is teaching me lessons in love that are changing my whole being for the better. We’ve been at the orphanage only a week, but after being away from the kids all weekend, I went to bed last night genuinely missing each one dearly and looking longingly forward to this morning when I could see their smiling faces again.



As would be expected, some days are harder than others. Mondays are particularly difficult since the kids spend the previous two days in a relatively un-structured environment and then are thrown into a classroom and told to sit still early on a Monday morning. I spent the day with all the littlest of our group, the babies and smallest toddlers in the first block and the 3-5ers for the second block.

For the first block, we played a relaxing game with the babies in which we tied balloons to the wrists of the ones who allowed it and they got to bounce it back and forth with their fists.



Baby Julie was slightly terrified, but overall, we had fun.



After our balloon game, the mama’s handed us bottles for snack time and that quickly led to a peaceful nap. I think I can safely say that I’ve never been happier to have a sore arm in my whole life.

Art class with toddlers often gets a little interesting, and it gets even more interesting when the room that we usually have (that’s fully equipped with tiny chairs and tables for the kids to sit at, and a door to close them in) isn’t available. However, we’re living the Guatemalan way and learning to adapt to any situation.



The “English” portion of the class (which is more just stimulation since most of them struggle with Spanish, let alone English) was a hit!



...For about ten minutes, and then we had to move on to finger painting, which also lasted about ten minutes.



We were having a hard time keeping everyone contained, so after we washed hands, we headed outside to decorate the sidewalks with chalk and play games.

Here, we caught our beautiful Valery in an incredibly precious moment playing “Mama.” She’s trying to balance a load on her head while walking and periodically takes it down to mix the contents of the bucket and exclaim “la comida!” (the food!). This is an exact mimic of the older Guatemalan women, who carry their groceries in bags on their head while they walk. What a subtle reminder of how children look up to those around them and aspire to be like grown-ups.

After hearing the life stories of a few of the children here, I can only help but think that they all have every reason in the world to be untrusting of anyone around them. However, we’re often greeted with big smiles, arms wide open, and requests to be held, hugged, and taken to activities. And even through frustrated tears and noses ending up in corners, when a child runs up to you with their arms up looking for love, it feels like the whole world stops and I want nothing more than for that moment to last forever.