their names and birthdates, using a lot of the donations I received before I came (thank you, thank you, thank you!) I then took all of their pictures, an event in and of itself, as most of them don´t have pictures of themselves, then glued them into the corresponding frames, and they turned out absolutely beautiful! This week we put them up on a wall in the center, in bulletin board fashion, and I had the kids help me decorate the border...so much fun!
Recycling this past week had the biggest turnout of kids since I started!! We had 7 kids dragging the bags that they had worked hard to fill to the recycling center and in total they earned 40 soles!! That´s definitely a record!!Another activity that has been recently started with the kids is basketball! About once a week we head over to the neighborhood court to shoop some hoops. After the first game, myself and another of the taller volunteers at the center have formed one team, as all the kids want to be our opponents!! They love getting to guard us, as their way of defense is to wrap us in big bear hugs, pull back on our belts as we drive to the basket, and their most favorite tactic...tickling. It´s usually still a rout though, but we have so much fun and I think the best exercise comes from laughing so hard, or from avoiding the aforementioned methods of defense!
Speaking of exercise, on one occasion of visiting the woman´s house that started the center (usually once a weekend her family will invite me for tea or lunch, they have become so much a part of my extended family), I was asked if I knew some different exercises to tone various parts of the body that her daughters wanted to work on. Now, I think my Spanish has become pretty good as of late. I was recently reading a book where the author described her stay in Italy for 4 months, and her description of learning Italian was exactly how I feel about my Spanish now! Basically, there is a line that is crossed, where speaking begins instead of just translating all the time. I´m talking. Of course, there is a mistake in almost every sentence and I only know about 3 or 4 of the verb tenses, but I can communicate...I can get by. So back to the exercises...I flipped back in my mental file to what I knew about yoga and Pilates, and then the challenge came to put that all into Spanish! So along with a heavy dose of demonstration, I was able to explain exercises such as "saludaciones al sol," "triangulo" and "el ciento"! We spent more time laughing as the women struggled to do the exercises, and their expressions of feeling the burn were priceless!
I didn´t think it was possible, but for you American football fans out there, I was able to watch a Monday Night Football game the other week! I ventured down to the little cafe that has an outdoor "milk bar" that serves the best soft serve here, and to my surprise I heard English coming from the TV! I looked up to see the Titans playing the Saints, and for a moment had a lapse of knowing where I was! For every English statement by the announcer, it was followed by a translation of Spanish, and unfortunately there was no touchdown during the part of the game I saw to know if they yelled "GOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL!!" in Spanish or not! In related news, I have also been able to see some of the baseball playoffs down here as well! Last Friday´s Red Sox versus the A´s was a special treat as I got to see Manny Ramirez´s 3-run game-ending homer! This weekend is the big fútbol game...Perú vs. Paraguay, and there´s some sort of qualification involved for the next World Cup game, so everyone is gearing up for what will hopefully be a big win!
Home visits continue to be my favorite part of this project, especially now to one town in particular. I wrote previously about El Alto, how we had switched the schedule to the afternoon briefly before realizing how inhospitable the place is after noon time. Well, we have now started work
on developing a central therapy room for those that we visit to come to instead of multiple home visits, as the caseload continues to grow there. One of the mothers of the children we visit has graciously allowed us to use a spare room/garage in her home, which is directly in the center of town near the bus stop. We spent all of last week painting and getting it ready, and this past week had our first therapy sessions there! It was incredible having the woman who founded the center down on the floor on a mattress with one of the children doing physical therapy, while I worked at a table with one of the older girls we visit on a sewing activity (written about in a previous entry) and another of the volunteers conducted screenings of children that were being brought in by their moms and dads to see if they could benefit from 
physical therapy! The girl I was working with on a sewing project was started last week, and she has done so well with it, really a fast learner! All of the materials were more donations (thank you!), and I am having her decorate a tote bag, first quilting squares of fabric together with the machine, then handsewing them to the bag, then decorating it 
with large plastic funky-shaped buttons. At first she was completely intimidated by the machine, as it was loud and there was a really sharp needle involved after all, but by the end of the session, I had to move the machine away from her as she kept trying to press the button that made it operate without any material underfoot, with a huge smile on her face! Handsewing the quilted squares to the bag was another challenge, as she has a tremor and I made sure to caution her how sharp the needle was. Well, she only stuck both herself and me one time, and she did one whole side independently!! Next couple of sessions were buttons, and being the fashionista that she is, she absolutely loved all the colors and shapes and getting to pick her own designs. The therapy room is a great project and so needed in this particular town, so it´s awesome to be a part of getting it started!My surfing outing last weekend I am chalking up to "learning a lot." It wasn´t a stellar performance, as the board cracked me in the nose at one point when I tried to go under a breaking wave on it, and I´m still wondering if I broke it given the amount of swelling and pain. But I did manage to catch 2 waves at the very end of my hour and a half out there, so it wasn´t a total loss. Again, I learned a lot. And more importantly, this outing was completely independent of an instructor, and on Máncora beach, which is a huge factor in and of itself as there are so many people usually out on the beach watching the performances of those in the water. Well, they got a good show last weekend...I´m sure there were plenty of "Ouch" and "Oh! That must´ve hurt" statements! Lot more bruises and cuts, but oh how I love this sport! This weekend I headed out into the water again...sans instructor. I had a little bit of a smaller board, so it was much easier to paddle, but I was worried I wouldn´t be able to stand up. The waves were a really nice size, but the current was very strong and therefore difficult to stay in the right spot to catch them. It took me a while to get going, but once I did, I managed to catch every other wave and stand up on every other one after that! After 2 hours, which felt like 30 minutes, my shoulders, arms and neck were ready to quit, so I headed in, feeling so great about my performance this weekend, especially since I managed to avoid knocking myself in the nose as I went under the breakers! There was a certain buzz in the air around town as some of the top surfers in the world were here this past week practicing for the World Surf Championships to be held in Perú at the end of this month. One surfer in particular is creating a mass of anticipation...the women´s world champion surfer is actually from Perú and trained in the waters off Máncora! There is a particular electricity in the air around town as everyone is on Sophie-watch!
So this past Monday was a national holiday here...honoring some sea captain that was crucial in the war between Perú and Chile. No classes on Monday, and Máncora was host to a very large fiesta Monday night. There are several popular cumbia/salsa bands that are from here, and one of the bands, Grupo Cinco, hosted the biggest block party I have seen in my 9 weeks here so far! And in the time I´ve been in Máncora, their music is on every radio, so I already knew some of their songs. Not sure where their name comes from, because there were definitely way more band members than 5, but they put on a show! They filled the central square with I think all of Máncora, and I made it through the gate and into the mass hordes within the square, going with some of the teachers and other volunteers from the center...we had an absolute blast! We salsa´ed the night away and I actually felt like I knew what I was doing!! There were so many people though that turns and things like that weren´t really physically possible, but we still had a great time...even though now I think I can appreciate what it feels like to be inside of a sardine can!
Another fiesta this past week was the birthday of the woman that founded the center. It was her 50th, and a surprise, and another great time had by all. Lots of preparations...I was even commissioned to draw a clown (I think it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself), which is a traditional decoration for all fiestas de cumpleaños here in Perú. I was invited along with several other volunteers, in addition to her 8 children, their spouses, and all of her grandchildren! Needless to say it was a packed house. It was a beautiful celebration though...of her, her work, and her dedication to her family was obvious as toast after toast was made, even the older grandkids got a chance with the microphone! This was also an emotional milestone as well, as this was the same woman I wrote about in one of my first entries that was involved in a very serious bus accident earlier this year that almost took her life. She has fought back hard and has an incredible support network in her family and friends, which was obvious that night. In addition to more salsa dancing that I got to practice more during (!), there was also a piñata...and the first one I had seen in Perú. They actually do it a little differently here...no bat involved first of all! One person picks aways at the bottom of the piñata while everyone else huddles around, waiting for the goodies to drop. First came lots of confetti, and in the midst of all the chaos as people were grabbing for anything they thought was a prize, sometimes someone else´s shirt, hand or something else (!), the grand prize inside was a pair of ladies underwear! In the style of a garter belt at weddings, the woman that runs the center graciously donned the panties over her pants with the aid of her husband, and they danced a song together, laughing the whole time! Definitely a Kodak moment, and the camera flashes were going off like crazy!
Lots of birthday fiestas this month, as another party this past week at the center was held for one of the older guys that attends (same one that hoards all of the plastic bottles he gathers for recycling that I wrote about in the last entry). More dancing, cake and games, as they do for every one of the kids´ birthdays, and he even got a present of a new baseball cap, socks and a pair of sunglasses. When he opened the package, you would have thought he had won a gold medal at the Olympics, as he crossed himself, blew a kiss up to heaven, then raised his arms in true victory fashion! Needless to say he was very pleased with his gifts! See attached picture of the cool dude hanging loose in his new shades and hat (he usually has the best smile, but he was concentrating so hard on doing the "shaka" sign with his hand that I taught him just for this picture)!So it´s hard to believe I have 2 weeks left here...and only a week and a half left of my project before I leave. I had to buy my return bus ticket this past week...very sad as now every time I see a bus I think that will be me very soon, and I know that I will have a hard time saying goodbye to all the kids and those that have become like family to me. In related news, the new volunteer for the center arrives Monday, so I´m very excited to show her around and orient her to the wonderful place that is the center!
