The murals

Mark and I were looking for a project that we could do that would stay with the kids even after we'd left. After thinking about it and considering different ideas we decided to do murals in the rooms of the kids. The people that will benefit from this the most are the ones that don't receive any attention from people that come because they are considered the "scarier" ones because they scream and will abuse themselves. I found studies that talked about the benefits of having art in the rooms of the disabeled. The studies showed that through the art stimulation the people were calmer and happier. The studies also found that it positively affected their healthy by lowering their blood pressure. We've had fun thus far. Although the paintings aren't all done in the pictures we have sinced finished them but haven't taken new pictures yet.

Happy Birthday Giovanni & Roberto

This past month was Roberto& Giovanni's birthdays! Big 18 & 28! We had them up for a noche especial to celebrate and we bought tres leches cake (which is the typical hispanic cake with three different kinds of milk poured all throughout it) and they absolutely loved all the attention! We gave Roberto a kite for his birthday. Now the trick will be using it when there's wind outside and not rain :)

Giovanni is of course Mr. tie man. He's been telling us about his birthday since the first day we got here and he told us exactly what he wanted-a tie! The good thing is ties are so cheap here it wasn't a problem.

Yummy tres leches!

Blowing the candles out! These pictures are a little bit backwards

A bunch of activities we've done over the past few weeks

We helped all the kids make different butterflies and they were pretty dang cute if I do say so myself. I have them all in our house now I'm trying to decide if I should make a mobil of them or something.

This was our superhero trashbag day. They were pretty funny how some of them got into it. Nahum thought he was a luchador and kept wrestling people and jumping on tables.

Up, up, and away!

Dominos! The cool way of doing it!

This was our dance club night. The kids LOVE dancing to music and they thought it was even more fun with the glow sticks.

In our class right now we're learning about the body and the different senses. This day was our sense of smell day so we blindfolded them and had different smells and had them guess what they thought it was. It was funny to see the different faces they made as they smelled stuff.

Reading has been a huge part of our stay here. Brayan is a little boy who loves one on one attention. If he doesn't have you all to himself he will drag you away from the group. I read every single one of those books on my lap to him and he listened to every word. I was pretty suprised because with most of the older people they don't have the patience to listen to all of it so I basically tell the story based on pictures.

To celebrate the anniversary of the Hogar a famous singer from El Salvador came and serenaded the nuns and the kids. Everybody was singing along to all of his songs and the girls loved him. They would all run up for a chance to dance with him and hug him. He was pretty good!

Memo is quite the character! I don't know where he get's his dance moves being they're a little shadey but one day during a fiesta with everybody watching he does this little stripping dance where he takes off his shirt slowly and swings it around his head! Then he was shaking his hips and everything! We about died laughing. I think the funniest part was that the nuns were right there laughing too!

Here we go!

So I kept waiting to start blogging about our time here because I thought it'd be kosher to introduce ourselves. This obviously hasn't gone to well so I'll be brief and let the rest of the posts act as an introduction. Mark and I met teaching at the MTC. I had just returned from my mission and started working there and that's how we met and were eventually married. We both speak spanish which has been a huge plus being here. I'm studying spanish translation and Mark is in the accounting program. That's it for now!

This is a random picture of us that I had on my computer. It's the only one that wasn't wedding or crazy poses:)