Dollar-A-Day: Day 6 - Los niños preciosos

I'm sure you guessed it, but the title means "The Precious Children". That is the best way I could think of to describe today (and the whole week). We spent the entire day at Casitas Kennedy today. This morning part of the group finished stenciling the last rooms in the baby's house. There was a young girl named Katrine in the house. She was visiting her one month old baby. The girl lives at Casitas, and she is only 16 years old. Her baby was so precious. I got to hold him for a few minutes. I'll try taking a photo of him tomorrow so you can see how cute he was. I hope one of us from the group can talk with her tomorrow and hear her story.

While we painted, the rest of the group sorted through all the clothing that was donated by people back home. We separated it out so we could deliver it to the different houses.

After we finished painting, we went to the toddler classroom to perform a puppet show, sing a song, and then let them bust open a Sponge Bob pinata full of dulces (candy to us gringos). They seemed to enjoy the puppet show, though I couldn't really tell since I was behind the curtain straining to keep my arm above my head and keep the puppet's mouth moving a little (it sounds much easier than it really is). We sang the Itsy-Bitsy SPider in English, then the kids sang it to us in Spanish. It was so cute when the little kids tried to break the pinata open. The 3 year old kids could barely swing the stick. Once the candy started falling out though, it was like bedlam with screaming little ones filling their shirts up. Our group was busy holding the older kids back, trying in vain to convince them they would be getting candy later in the day. It didn't help that none of us knew how to say that in Spanish. :)

Performing our puppet show. I was the girl puppet. :)

Getting the piñata ready.

After lunch we split up again. Part of the group went to the cafeteria to have the kids do some crafts. It was set up with different stations to try to minimize the chaos that occurred during bracelet making with 30 kids at once.

This is when the craft time was ending.

While they did crafts, the rest of us went around and delivered clothes to the different groups of kids. It was so amazing to see the look on their faces when we handed them new socks and a used dress, shirts, and pants. Every kid got at least one whole outfit. We were telling them "probarse" (try it on), and many of them reacted with a pout and reluctantly went to try them on. The little girls came out to show their new clothes off. A lot of the kids wore their new outfits the rest of the day, displaying them proudly wherever they went. One of the little boys named Roy was also SOOOO excited when he got a pair of shoes that light up. He was equally excited to get new socks. When was the last time you were excited about new socks???

There is a group of 7 older boys (ages 8-11) who have really touched the hearts of our group. Most of the clothes that they wore this week were dirty, shredded, and with broken zippers. Many of them ran around barefoot as well. When we went shopping, we decided to get that group a special gift. We bought each boy a some sandals, shoes, clothes, underwear, and socks. We also made salvation bracelets for each boy. We gathered them in their Casita to let them open their packages. Every one of their faces lit up as they opened them up. They all were smelling the clothes, looking amazed that they don't have the grimy smell that permeates everything there (probably from being washed in dirty water). They were smelling the shoes, jeans, and even the underwear. It was both funny and sad that they were amazed to actually have underwear that hadn't been worn before. We were allowed to take some photos of them at this time, so here are several.