We love these guys! Edwin (to the right) and Geovanny (to the left) are brothers and they are the cutest! I posted the following pictures a couple at a time because you never know when our internet will go out. Hallelujah because I succesfully got all of them on here in the end, but a better description of them is down below.

I love this picture too. On Friday they held the special olympics for the kids and they have been wearing the medals they won all this week. The kids love to show us all the medals they won. You can't see the whole thing in this picture but the blue thing around Xiomara´s neck is her medal and she loved showing it off to us.
I love this one of Xiomara, she always has a smile on her face

Here is Karen putting on her handprint, and there are lots of others watching!

Efrain wanted two colors so he got red and blue to paint on the sheet.

Things are going well here! First, we learned about parades one day in school and then had one of our own. Each kid got a musical instrument and we paraded all over the hogar to the macarena song. Yesterday, our school class was interrepted and we all were told to go into the cafeteria where we held a huge birthday party for the four birthdays the month of September. It was the biggest cake that I have ever seen and of course, there was lots of candy! One morning, Taylee and I set up a white sheet on the wall and everyone got their turn to put their handprint on it. The kids liked it a lot and most of them stayed after their turn just to watch the others. It was so crowded around us by the end that we could hardly move! Finally, every Wednesday we go in this building called the lactantes area where 20 or so kids are kept and we play with them, put lotion on them, or read to them. My favorite is Miguelito, he loves throwing that ball!

So the internet has been down for a couple of days. Sorry for the class photo delay from my earlier post, but here it is. Things are still going well here. Every Wednesday we are going to spend the mornings in the lactantes with Marielos. The kids love to be touched and we put lotion on them. Miguel loved throwing the ball, he got a kick out of it!

So we are starting to get into the hang of things here. We told the afternoon teacher, Senorita Imperatriz, that we would start teaching and helping out with the afternoon class on Friday. Who knows where she was yesterday because she didn't show up so we taught the whole class by ourselves. We had a "get to know you" theme and everyone picked their favorite colors, shapes, musical instruments, sports, etc. and then shared it with with the rest of the class so we could get to know each other a little better. Taylee and I would then tell the class what some of our favorite things were and show it to them. For music I pulled out my harmonica and played a song for them. For food we gave them some carrot sticks as our favorite vegetables. The best though was our favorite animal because we pulled out a little goldfish that we had gotten earlier that morning as a class pet for while we are down here. They named the fish Nemo like the disney character in Finding Nemo. It was a big hit already and the kids loved to feed and watch it at night. At the end we told them we really like to take pictures and we took this class photo.

We're Here!

Missy and I finally made it to the Hogar! We already are loving it and getting used to working with the residents here. They are so kind and patient when it comes to our spanish and I am very grateful for that. Yesterday they had a fiesta and we enjoyed watching everyone dancing and having fun. We are so happy that we have people to answer our questions also because we would be lost without the help that we have received.