Mis Niños

Thug Life (Jorge and I); Luis and I

Cristian Chico; Cristian Grande

Cristian Chico, Luis and volunteer Luis playing chess, Toribio watching tv; Marcos

Cristian Chico and I; Manuel

Soccer in the compound; Luis and I

Jorge and Manuel; Cristian Grande

Uriel aka El Grande; Marcos and I

Adrian; Adrian

Luis; Cristian Grande

May 27, 2008

I can’t wait for the rainy season to start here. I am soooooo hot!!!! All I do in the afternoons here is sleep. I get home from work, stuff myself full of Sra. Sara’s amazing food, and go have a nice long siesta. Today I’m going to see if I can survive without a siesta… but I don’t have much faith in the plan. We have two new boys at the centre this week that arrived over the weekend. They are both 13 years old but are nearly as small as my 8-year-old host sister because of malnutrition and drugs. Their names are Jorge and Manuel (I love how ridiculously Mexican everyone’s names are). They are both really sweet kids. They took to me immediately unlike some of the other boys who are just starting to warm up to me now. I’m getting over my bout of culture shock already… yes my money is gone but I just can’t stay mad at those boys. They are far too cute for their own good. Marcos will be leaving on Thursday so tomorrow I will be taking my camera to get lots of photos to share with you all. I will miss that boy so much. Entertaining nine boys everyday is seriously draining work. By the end of my five-hour shift I just want to crash… and I usually do.

In keeping true to my word this weekend I did a whole lot of nothing. Friday night I went out with Jous and the other volunteers to a bar where there was a beauty pageant of some sort going on. One of Jous friend’s little sister was competing. As far as I could tell it was something along the lines of Miss Teen Guzmán. It was a bunch of high school students at any rate. There was a live band that started as drums only an evolved into a full-fledged banda party. We had a great time. Saturday morning, the other three volunteers (I guess I should mention that we have two new volunteers here from America Kristen and Tyler) went to Guadalajara for the weekend. So, I spent the day washing my clothes and trying to read my new book. That night Jous and I went to a bar called Pubb. There is definitely nothing pub-like about it but they had a delightful secret cocktail that I thoroughly enjoyed. Sunday evening I spent in the town centre taking part in the weekly cultural festival and ate my first Mexican hotdog: way better than Canadian hotdogs! So that was my exciting weekend. I’m looking forward to tomorrow… let’s hope my camera survives the day.

PS My camera survived. Best day ever taking photos with the boys today!