happy Dia de los Ninos!

To help you celebrate this festive Latin holiday, here are some of my favorite short stories from the definitely Latin-flavored orphanage. Disfruta! (Enjoy!)

I have already mentioned in a previous blog post how the little girls loved to play with my hair and try out new and interesting ideas on my head. In addition, they also love to make me give them new and usually ridiculous hairstyles with their hair! Catarina definitely has her own sense of style and is very particular about the way I can fix her hair. One day, she found an extra ponytail holder on the ground and demanded I add an extra ponytail to her already half-up hair do. The place she insisted I place it? Just above her ear, sticking out like a spurt of water from a whale. The rest of the day Catarina walked around with the air of a princess, feeling so beautiful in her new updo.

While Catarina definitely marches to the beat of her own drum with her unique sense of style, she also dances to the beat of her own salsa! She is one of the oldest girls that I work with, and is therefore pretty self-sufficient at most things. When it comes to bath time, Senora Rosita gives her a towel and lets her walk to the showers and bathe herself. One day after receiving her towel, Catarina takes off down the hallway swinging her hips and shaking her little booty, completely in her own world, completely unaware that anyone was watching, and completely overcome by the urge to baila! I would have loved to hear the song that was playing in her head…   

Continuing with the hair theme, another one of my favorite moments involved one precious little girl, a lost ponytail holder, and a blast from the past. This little girl in particular was Julieta and at this moment in particular she had taken out her ponytail and tossed it outside the crib and across the room. When I turned around and caught a glimpse of this little trickster I died laughing at the sight my eyes beheld. She was grinning from ear to ear with pride at capturing my attention, and the only thing bigger than her smile was her foot of hair sticking straight up in the air. Her hair looked exactly like the little troll dolls we used to play with when we were kids. Refresh your memory here: http://www.thefunkyapple.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/trolls.jpg Never thought I’d see that hairstyle in person!

One of the best things about working with kids under four is the pure ingenuity and downright illogical courage that comes with that age. One day while the rest of the kids were building with Legos, Juanito and Daniel had moved some of the toddler beds away from the wall and pushed them together. When I happened to look over, they had created an entire gymnastics routine on their new personal playground climbing up the headboards, thrusting their bodies over the side, dangling upside down with only their feet for a few seconds, and then flipping over to land backside down on the mattress on the other side. The best part was seeing their mischievous little grins pop up above the headboard when they bounced back up to do it again.    

In other news, today was also a dia de enfermedad (sickness). I have spent much of the past two days in my room sick once again with an awful stomach bug. Since this is the third time in the past three weeks I’ve had these problems, Vilma suggested I go to a clinic today and see if it may be something more than just normal adjusting to the new food. Together we walked to a clinic only three minutes away from the house and found out that I may have a bacterial infection. Nothing a good dose of antibiotics can’t fix though! Hopefully that will do the trick and this will be the last blog you have to read about getting sick. It is such a blessing to have a host family who takes care of me so well. Vilma’s brother-in-law also happens to be a doctor, so he was able to interpret the results of the test and help me figure out what to do next. Thankful that my first time being sick in a foreign country is so easily treatable!