5-31-10

Today is Monday but it doesn’t really feel like it. I don’t really know what day it feels like haha. Tomorrow is my day off and at first when they told me I would have two days off I didn’t really understand why, I mean what else am I going to do with my time. I now understand. After working with kids seven hours a day you want your time to breathe and relax. I don’t really know what I am going to do because everyone else will be working but who knows maybe I’ll go on an adventure somewhere. Anyway nothing to exciting happened today I think it was the calmest day of the week. I went outside the gates with the older kids to play some soccer with the neighbors. I now understand why all the Mexican kids are so amazing at soccer. That’s the only sport that they have so they eat, breath and live for it. Even the ten year olds can juggle better than most Americans. After the boys got tired of 2 hours of soccer they started playing in the junk yard by the neighbor’s house. I didn’t really know if it was ok but the Tia’s (that’s Spanish for aunt, it’s what they call the lady workers) never said anything about it. We washed the kids and that was my day at the orphanage so yeah nothing too crazy. Earlier that day one of the social workers came and he tried talking to me but he was talking so fast I kind of just looked at him like I was the most confused person ever haha so he then spoke in English and I think it surprised everyone. We didn’t know why he was here though, whenever he comes it’s either to pick up one of the kids or drop a new one off so we were all curious on what was going on. It turns out he was just doing a check up on all the kids.
It’s really funny how different Mexico and America handle their children. I have already noticed so many things that America would freak out about. The first thing is if the kids drop their food on the floor they just let them eat it off the ground like it’s no problem. This includes dropping it outside on the grass or concrete. If this happened in America the child would be scolded if they ate something off the floor. Also they only use one cup for all the kids. When eating or playing outside there is a cup by the water tank and whenever a child wants a drink they just use the cup. When I was playing outside with the boys and the neighbors they were making pretend food and would use the water used to feed the cows. They would also stick rocks in their mouths and no one would really say anything, I thought that one was pretty interesting. When we were giving the little kids showers one of the boys kept sticking a toy in the toilet then getting it back out and putting it in his mouth and kept doing that for like five minutes and no one said anything to him haha. The last thing that I really noticed was that when I subbed at the daycare in America after changing a diaper we would have to change gloves clean the table then we were allowed to change another one. Here its shower all the babies together and change them wherever, who cares if you were just outside digging in the dirt. Those are just a few differences in cultures that I noticed today. I don’t really know which one I agree with because sometimes I do feel like America freaks out to much about germs and cleanliness but then again I would never want my child sticking a toy from the toilet in his mouth haha.
After I got off I came back to my house and decided to rearrange all the furniture to make it a little homier. It now looks more like a house maybe tomorrow I’ll go see if I can find some cheap things to decorate it with. I think I have a problem when it comes down to what the inside of my house looks like. In my room at home and my dorm room I have everything decorated perfectly and I now find myself doing it to the intern house. Good news my dad fixed my camera via skype lol oh how I love technology.