Friends and crushes at the Aldea

January 30, Carrie:

For the past two weeks I’ve noticed how the children at the Aldea are good about playing with different groups of friends. The kids still have people they are more likely to play with, but in general, they are good at including each other and varying who they play with. When we play sports it’s especially fun to watch how all the kids, of all ages, can play together and still have fun! This past week I was told that Alfredo, one of the boys in house 2, has a little crush on one of the little girls in house 1 named Antonina. On Friday, the Aldea had a birthday party for the children who had birthdays in January which was really fun. At this birthday party there was dancing, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone because Peruvians love to dance! During the dancing part of the fiesta, Alfredo asked Antonina to dance and they danced holding hands, with Antonina giggling the whole time and Alfredo standing there being a perfect gentleman.

This week we played in the pools that were donated to the Aldea with the kids on Tuesday and Thursday morning. I also had the opportunity to help teach an English class with Caesar who works for the Aldea and Julia one of the new interns for southern cross. Other than that we played soccer at least once a day, played a game called Kiwi and went to a fiesta for the kids with birthdays in January that was held on Friday.

Child Highlights:

1. Victor David in house 2 and I played monopoly two seperate times after dinner. I was eating at their house this week.

2. We watched Lucho and Renzo in our house for 2 hours on thursday while their Tia was gone. We played ball and tried to get Renzo to walk.

3. I talked with Victor David about what he likes to do, he's a really smart kid who loves reading and learning new things. He helped me with some Spanish and I taught him some things in English like "my name is...," "goodbye," "good morning," "thank you," and "how are you."