Hoy fuimos al parque

A week has already flown by! Above is a picture of the main patio area and classroom of Hogar de los Ángeles in Colonia San Antonio. It's only a block away from where I live! There are two daycare centers--(1) the original in San Antonio and (2) the new center in Santa Julia, which opened in 2008. My work this summer will be split between the two.

(1) Mondays and Tuesdays I will be at the old center in San Antonio. The class that I volunteer in houses the two year-olds (who, thankfully, are all potty trained, save one) with Marisol--a warm and welcoming woman who has been working at the center for three years. It's a fun, rambuncious little group of eight boys and one girl. It's been awhile since I've worked with such young kids, so I wasn't anticipating so much fighting and crying. ¡Él me pegó! (He hit me!) is a commonly used phrase by the kids. The victim, who often cries more for the attention than because of the pain, is often consoled with No llores, no pasa nada. (Don't cry, nothing's going on.)

(2) Wednesdays and Thursdays I will be at the new center in Santa Julia, also working with two year olds. The teacher I am assisting is named Lola, and she has been working at the daycare since it's beginning ten years ago. She is a seasoned veteran, very good at what she does. The kids there I haven't had the chance to get to know as well. This Wednesday a boy named Chema started showing signs of maricela (chicken pox) and by Thursday, all had contracted it as well and were sent home with their mothers.

(1/2) Fridays I alternate with the two centers, accompanying them for field trip day, which brings me to today! Today the San Antonio daycare made the trek out to Parque Juarez, where the kids seemed to have a grand old time kicking around plastic inflated balls and enjoying the play toys.

Although it's only been a week, the personalities of each child have all come out. Let me introduce you to one!

Juan Pablo

Juan Pablo made an impression on me since day one. Every Monday the children wear all white in honor of the bandera (flag). They conduct a ceremony, saluting and singing songs about it. Well, given that these are two year olds, mind you, all the kids in Marisol's class managed to get pretty dirty before lunch was even served. It was decided that the kids needed to be changed into new clothes, but the trick was that Marisol had to go around to the classrooms scrounging for spare clothes that were around. As I mentioned earlier, the boy-girl ratio highly favors boys, so it happened that some of the boys had to wear girls' clothing. Juan Pablo was one of those boys. For the rest of the day he wore a bright hot-pink t-shirt with white overalls with small flowers decorating it. Every time I saw him playing I just cracked up a little inside; since he's got such long eyelashes, those clothes really brought out his feminine side.

My favorite thing about Juan Pablo, though, is when it's changing time (Tuesday through Friday the mom's pack a spare change of clothes to put on before pick-up). To make sure the kids stay still, Marisol puts in a movie (all week long it has been the same one: Mulan dubbed in Spanish). The kids are sitting in a line in their little metal chairs, finishing up their agua (melon, mango or pineapple blended with water and sugar) after lunch. I just could not get over how captivated Juan Pablo was by the movie. That's him in the second picture, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth open. As I lifted his shirt over his head to put on his clean one he didn't take his eyes off the screen. Man, it's hilarious.

There's so much more to say, but I'll leave it to another day. I leave you with a clip of two of the boys, Erik and Emilio, playing around as they wait to get picked up. You can hear the voice of Marisol saying No, no peleen (No, don't fight)--another handy phrase.