Day 11

I'm going to try to make this short, because it's late again. I never have time to write during the day because I'm at El Refugio, and at night something else is usually happening, so I always end up staying up late to write. Whoever reads this, you should feel loved.

I went downstairs this morning, and one of the mission trip men from Sandiego had made pancakes! It was a good start for the day, then I talked with José and Jesús and the man who made the pancakes -- they are like 60 somehting years, and here for construction work, and we talked about books. I now quite the addition to my list of books I need to read :)

Then switching over to El Refugio: today we went to the park. Each of the kids had a tiny little water gun (I have no idea whose idea that was), so that was fun, haha, there was a ton of running and chasing and tackling and water. Then when we were done we collapsed into a pile, and the kids were like "tell us a story!" Uhm... yeah I can do that I guess... So I told them I would tell them a story from my life and they were all like, "YAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!" and had super high expectations or something. This was my "story":

"When I was little, and living in Papua New Guinea, my friends and I built a house, in a tree (all of them look super amazed) and it was such a beautiful tree house. It had two stories, and a swing, and oonly me and my friends were allowed up there. We would play in it all day long."

     End of story. Haha, but they liked it! I guess it's a good thing that the attention span of children isn't very long and they are content with a 2 minute story (yes, it took me about 2 minutes to say that in Spanish). Then Mercedes pointed to a tree and asked me if I could climb it, and I said yes automatically without really seeing if I in fact could climb it. But I ran over to the tree and started climbing it and I got waaay up super high; it was so much fun! I haven't climbed trees in foreever. Then Julio (9 years old)  joined me. He's a tiny little boy so he only got half way, which was still really good. When I got down, Blanca told me she wanted to climb (she's 4), so I put her on my back and we climbed part way up this other tree. Maybe that wasn't super responsible, but it wasn't that high, and she loved it :)
     For lunch there was Yuka, it's tapioca with a type of hot sauce, it's reeeally good. And it was awesome because it was tapioca, one of the potatoes I grew up on in Makwawkalumona. Good stuff. I didn't have anything else to say about lunch...
    I usually do something with the four older kids in the afternoon, because the get bored the easiest. The house is really big and there is a big yard, but they don't go out a lot, and don't really have friends outside the orphanage. Anyways, this afternoon we painted with watercolours, and I taught them that if you use oil pastels on your paper first, then you can paint with watercolours overtop and the oil pastels still shining through. These kids are super artistically talented. I painted a picture of a starry night with silhouetted tree tops with some birds. When I was finished, Rahel told me that I had painted what death looks like. I've decided to take it as a compliment.
     Before I leave I always water the garden, which I did today as well. Lucas and Rahel helped me, which was super sweet of them, except for that I was sort of teasing Rahel while she had the hose (I was turning the water on and off), which was a really stupid idea. Because the next thing I knew I was soaked. Haha.

Tonight was spent in Miraflores. Tamara was going to meet a friend of a friend there, and I went with her so she wouldn't go alone. So we talked to this friend and his group of friends who were all from Chile, went out and got some french fries that were super tasty. Like, they tasted home made from real potatoes you know? Anyways, so that was a nice little outing. There was a little market in the middle of the park, so we walked around looking at jewlery and hats and peruvian stuff. Fun fact, a ton of people think my bilum is Peruvian... something about the pattern of it or something. So I fit in then, I guess :)

And that was my day! Now I shall sleep. Goodnight.