Day 5

Yesterday I woke up with the realization that it was Monday and my first art class would be in the evening. I finalized my shopping list and together with Kyla and one of the older girls, Suleyma, we headed into town.

The market in Coita is so colorful and narrow. Little winding aisles with wooden tables full of goods - fresh cut flowers, vegetables, toys, clothing, and yesterday, a live turkey in a bag with its head poking out. Totally weird.

So I found everything I was looking for; more cups and spoons for the dining room in Hogar (there's never enough for everyone), a pot to boil water in for me and my own spoon. I also bought fruits and veggies and coffee. Coffee has been hard to go without. I felt kind of weak giving in to my addiction, but I do think I'll enjoy the mornings more now. I got a few art supplies as well.

The three of us girls had a great afternoon buying things and eating. We had liquidos - a flavored milk, and little cinnamon pastries. Later we had tacos al pastor and sodas. We walked back to Hogar, feeling like it had been a real treat to go into town.

I spent the next hour and a half preparing for my class. I chose a project that I thought could work with all ages and would hopefully be something they could hang in their dorms. We have a ton of colored tissue paper so I chose stained glass as our first project. I quickly threw together an example, copied my little intro speech and instructions in Spanish from google translate, and set the room up. I wasn't sure how many kids would show. Apparently my class is obligatory for the elementary age kids. At first I only had 3 girls, but soon enough the class was filled. I think about 20 kids were there. What a mess they made! The tables were covered in paper and glue and the floors were scattered with all kind of craziness. I think it was a success. Some kids were into it more than others but that's to be expected. The littlest ones went to town, tearing into the paper and covering everything with glue. At the end, most had at least followed the idea of making stained glass windows and the place looked like a tornado had torn through there. I spent the next 2 hours cleaning up and trying to get the white plastic tables to be white again rather than multicolored. I didn't know that tissue paper stained that much.

I teach another class on Wednesday and now at least I have an idea of who might attend my class and what they are capable of. The littlest kids did surprisingly well and actually required less help and direction than the bigger kids. Maybe we'll paint, since that seems to be what most of them are excited about.

I talked to one of the directors, Tia Arde about wanting to raise funds to completely redo the bathroom in the little boys' dorm. We had about a 20 minute conversation about their dorm, the possibility of moving them to another dorm, how expensive the maintenance and utilities are at Hogar, and the fact that the little boys' entire dorm needs to be redone. Their ceiling is leaking and the paint is peeling off the walls. Mind you, this whole conversation was in Spanish, so I think I got about 40% of the conversation, just enough to understand the gist of in, but few of the specifics. However, she seemed to be in support of this fund drive for the bathroom and asked if maybe I would be interested in taking on the whole building. I will raise as much as I possibly can, that much is certain. If we can do the whole building then I would call it a miracle. There is a bit of a time crunch since new little boys are coming in June. Today I'm going to work on setting up the infrastructure to raise support for the project. I think it will primarily be through this blog.