week 19: i'm too tired to think of a name for this week (october 20-26)

rosali: it's been a while since i've talked specifically about the kids here. this is one of the girls i work with in the special needs home. her name is rosali and she is 8 years old. the first thing you notice about rosali when you meet her is that she is so joyful. she doesn't talk, but she sure does laugh. everyone she sees she is greeting and running up to, waving her hands, looking for a hug. and when you start to talk to her she just smiles and laughs and makes all sorts of noises. she can't talk, but she does understand a lot... like she can follow simple commands, but her attention span is pretty much non-existent, so working with her can be quite challenging. getting her to focus or play with one thing at a time is very difficult. we take a lot of walks and swing on the swings and she also likes to play with blocks. lately we have been walking down to the school at recess so she can interact with the other kids. it's cute to watch because she gets so exited and just starts laughing and screaming (in a good way) when she's playing with everyone else. we have to be careful though, because when she gets to excited she wets her pants (which actually happens quite often... just lovely). she can communicate a little, like when she wants water she says, "wawa...wawa.." over and over. the physical therapist and i want to try to start teaching her some signs or give her picture cards to help her communicate. despite the frustrations of dealing with her short attention span and trying to get her to listen, rosali is a really sweet little girl... and if nothing else, she always manages to put a smile on everyone's faces.

chichiguas: well this saturday i experienced my first "latin america stomach sickness"... i still have no idea what happened to me and i'll spare everyone the details, but something did not agree with my stomach. so i barely slept saturday night and when sunday morning finally came, i had chills and a fever, had lost about 10 pounds and was feeling quite weak and out of it. i wanted to just stay in bed all day, but sunday was family day so it was the job of all the volunteers to keep the kids entertained (especially those who didn't have family coming to visit). i was supposed to be in charge of playing sports with another volunteer, but that just wasn't going to happen so i decided to make "chichiguas" (or kites) with kids in the shade. now making chichiguas i think is a national past time here in the dr. the kids are always making and flying kites. it's really cute. at first i thought it was an nph thing, but i've seen kids outside making the exact same kites (and it's funny because you see them stuck in all the electric lines here). i think it's just a really easy, inexpensive way to make a toy out of stuff that you can just find lying around anywhere. so basically to make a dominican chichigua... you need 3 sticks (however small or big you want your kite to be)... string... and a plastic bag (light weight grocery store bags work the best). you criss-cross the sticks together and tie them in the middle and around the sides and then rip out the plastic bag and tie it to the ends of the sticks. then you tie the rest of the string to the end of one of the sticks and you can hold the excess in your hand or find another little stick to wrap it around so you can fly it. some of the kids also attach tails with the extra grocery bags. they're really fun to make and the breeze here is great for kite flying. the kids sometimes have contests to see who can get theirs the highest in the air. one day we found these huge sticks and made a kite that was like bigger than the kids... and we actually got it in the air a few seconds! fun times :)

"God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you... let God be God in you." - meister eckhart