Play time

The Abergue Infantil Daycare center is superbly run. I have been so impressed with the teachers, staff, quality, and care that they provide for the kids and the parents only have to pay $6 a month for their child to attend. This may not seem like much, but for the parents of these kids, $6 can be a lot. Luckily, the daycare has other sources of funding to keep them running.

The teachers are all so enthusiastic and love these children so much. They love playing music during the days and often, we all get up and start dancing. The kids then join in and we jump around the hall. In fact, the teachers are actually great merengue dancers and often put on a show. They have tried to bring me into the dance mix, but I usually fail miserably. I have also been impressed with the creativity of the teachers and thorough education they provide, physical exercise the children receive; a PE teacher comes twice a week, and early basic sex education. The other day, Mariella played a game with the children where they had to outline each others bodies with chalk on the floor. Then the kids had to fill in the missing body parts. The kids couldn't figure out the difference between boys and girls until Mariella pointed to the exact location of the difference, and the children yelled out the difference. They even drew in the difference as seen in this photo.

I do encounter times when the children shock me. Samuel,a 17 month old boy, loves to kiss all the girls especially if they are crying. He will wipe away their tears and then kiss them on the check. Most, but not all the girls, like it. Tiffany in this picture even returns the favor. He has become a real Valentino. However, the other day, I watched in horror as he gave Melanie a kiss on the check and then promptly started biting off her check until she started bleeding. I quickly removed her from him. Valentino had turned into a vampire. I comforted Melanie and addressed her wounds while Orlinda, a teacher, explained to Samuel that what he did was wrong although, I'm unclear how much of that he understood. On another day, Orlinda told a boy that he could show his drawing to his dad. Upon hearing this, Anderson, a 5 year old boy, yelled out "I don't have a father" in Spanish saying it more as a statement than anything else. I wanted to cry. Last month, Anderson's father hung himself. I'm not sure if Anderson fully comprehends the situation.

For the most part, they are extremely well behaved children. They put their toys away, they push their chairs in, they remove small chokeable objects from the 2 year olds hands, they support one another down the stairs and almost all the 2 year olds are potty trained. However, they will not stop crying until justice is served. I am often searching out the root cause of their crying and then disciplining the offending child by placing him/her against the wall with the unhappy face. They never like that. Immediately after serving the sentence, the crying child stops crying. Disciplining more than one child at once is difficult. One morning, one of the teachers left me to watch over 30 of her kids while she attended to another matter. They were all playing with legos, but then at one point, Samuel started to eat the legos and the older kids started to throw the legos at each other. I had to break up fights, discipline kids, comfort crying children, remove chokeable items, and refind my inner peace all at the same time. Tough day indeed.

On Thursday, I joined some of the kids to their very first school trip to the local library. The children loved the opportunity to play in a new setting. We played with balls, bicycles, computers, books and their imagination. Although, I love every minute that I spend with the kids, I have reduced my hours at the daycare since I am now teaching English to children at an orphanage, which I will write about later. I am very behind on my blogging with much to catch up on.