Dog Piles & Tons of Smiles

Much to the dismay of most of our team members, this morning started off with breakfast at blessed 6:30. After a meal of eggs and pancakes we headed off to start the new week at Centro de Fey. Once we arrived we headed straight upstairs to the tiny grade 11 classroom and started our day off with devotions led by Emma and Aliya with the help of our translator Nilda. After devotions, we said a quick goodbye to the grade 11's and eagerly headed towards the grades 1, 2 and 3 classrooms where we split off into groups and made picture frames with the students. We had about an hour to do so but by the time we were 30 minutes in, the majority of the students were done so we had some free time to run around and burn some energy with the kids, needless to say, our energy was no match for that of the kids. I made the mistake of lifting one student and suddenly there was a lineup 20 kids long all asking for the same "ride." Everyone was chased and climbed on or in my unfortunate case, both at the same time. I was being chased by 10-20 kids for a solid 20 minutes and when I asked Lester our translator for help to tell them to stop, he proceeded to encourage them to chase me... It ended up with me on the floor with kids all over me and our translators laughing on the side. After the chaos they call recess, we headed up stairs to do the same craft with the grade 4, 5 and 6 classes. Thankfully this one was much less hectic but we still had an amazing time connecting with the students in a way that didn't require us to speak. Before each starting these crafts we had the opportunity to handout to each student the cards that students in our school made for them. After another hour of our team helping make picture frames and me not even being able to work a popsicle stick we moved on to individual classes where we were peppered with questions about our lives, life in Canada and our faith with questions ranging from "what is Canada's national bird?" to "do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?" Once the bell rang at noon signaling the end of the day we sat down to eat lunch with the grade 11 class where we had our typical meat, rice, beans and plantain and a pepsi. While a number of us finished our food quite quickly, we broke out the speaker and started dancing to everything from "Veggietales" to "Watch Me." We then all piled on to the ridiculously hot school bus and headed for the National Palace where we hung out for a few hours, played some games and took a LOT of pictures. After running around play blob in 38 degree weather, we piled into the van and headed back to the Nehemiah Center where we had a chance to unwind, debrief and prepare for tomorrow's long day. Anyways, I have a bag of Oreo's waiting for me, ADIOS!!!