Kids Here

Today I went to Pedernales in the morning to make some educational games. After watching the math games that Kari made up, and their success, I decided to make the same game, but with words. James tried doing a rough draft of the flashcards, and the kids really liked it. I looked up the most commonly used Spanish words for the lowest reading level so they can get familiar with small words you see in every sentence like our English “the” or “and”. Then I looked up harder words for the next level, and long, hard words for the last level. They will each be a different color. Yellow is the easiest followed by green, and then blue for the challenging ones.

I also did some research on the plants that I learned about the day before, but it was very hard to research without scientific names of the plants. I will have to work with a Botanist to identify some of them.

Kids in line to play

Karina watching a game

Kari Giving out stickers

Today, in the library, the photojournalism interns came to visit. Thursdays are game days, so we all played educational games. My game wasn’t ready yet because I did not have time to print. After library was over, I had promised a few girls I would do their nails. I ended up having every girl and some boys crowd around asking. So, while the boys were playing futbol (soccer) in the main street area outside the school, I did about 20 girls’ nails. Some of them were a bit bratty about it, and one girl even pushed another over leading her to cry and everyone to crowd around. When I found out what happened I forced the first girl to apologize, which I can tell she had never done before. Some of the kids are troublemakers, but only a few. It is very hard to have a serious talk when I can’t speak the language well enough, so I tried my best to explain that she disappointed me, but I’m not sure if I got through to her. My work here is very similar to working with kids in the US; kids will be kids, not matter where in the world you are!

At night, Kari made authentic Italian pizza for Jennifer’s birthday. We had BBQ chicken pizza, and Hawaiian as well. The photographer, Eric, and Jas, one of the interns came to Kari’s house. Jason, Jennifer, my host sister Fabiola, and I all went together. My host brother decided to invite himself as well. We all sat there and drank wine and talked all night. The pizza was DELICIOUS, and I felt so good eating non-Ecuadorian food for once.  It was a really fun night.