Sweep team made the week a little more complicated as well. All the sweep teams rotate between five different locations of the house and that week we had patio. Patio includes the large patio plus the road to volunteers, the road from the entrance, and the road along the front gate, aka a huge area. Castigados or kids being punished usually help diminish the actual area a sweep team has to cover by sweeping as punishment for whatever sins they've committed. That week I don't know if the children were all being saints or just being allocated to different areas because we routinely spent at least 45 minutes if not over an hour sweeping every day. This is highly unusual. Normally sweep team is only supposed to be about 30 minutes so over an hour is a big deal. I was grateful when the sweep team portion of the week ended.
Friday was a little different in that we did chores instead of during the usual Saturday morning break. The room was given a very thorough cleaning. I also went a little nuts with photos. It was the first day I officially used my new camera. I finally was able to buy a memory card my previous descanso and actually started to use it on Friday. The girls were pretty excited too I think. It was a pretty quiet night. I helped one of my girls make a Build-a-Bear she had gotten for her birthday which was fun. I've always enjoyed crafts and sewing and it was nice to get to use that experience with my girls.
Scrubbing the room in the traditional NPH fashion: dump water on it.
Us sitting outside the room waiting for the floor to be finished.
A line of my section walking back from dinner. How sweet!
Me helping one of my girls with her new Build-a-Bear. What a great gift! I didn't even know they had portable Build-a-Bears now! Anything creative like this is great for the girls and gives them a fun activity to do beyond the norm here.
Saturday was an extra special day because our section along with Grandes B girls and Medianos were chosen to attend an event for kids at a technical college outside of Cuernavaca. Unfortunately this meant being up well before everyone else, but I was excited to be with my girls in an environment outside of the house. Almost everyone fell asleep on the bus ride over. The day (or I should say morning) itself consisted of a series of different stations all with activities geared towards environmental awareness with games and prizes for the kids. Apparently this is an annual thing in celebration of Dia de los Ninos (Children's Day), a huge holiday in Mexico held at the end of the month. Throughout April, all different kinds of groups either come to the home or host groups outside to celebrate the day and pamper the kids. It was a little boring for me as I did not directly participate in the activities, but I still had fun and I know the girls loved the prizes.
Two of my girls sleeping on the bus. It was a pretty early day after a relatively late weekend night.
Our first station of the day concluded with a rousing game of Pata, Pata, Ganso (Duck, Duck, Goose).
Another station sponsored by a Mexican version of Chuck E. Cheese's. It was so cute because all the furniture was for kids clearly much younger than my girls, but they didn't let that stop them!
One of the Mediano boys, with his prizes from the day.
Our group of the day: my section and half of Medianos. They look so together in their NPH golf shirts and jeans!
We got back to the house in time to enjoy a bit of a carnival a visiting group had put together for us as well as lunch. The rest of the afternoon was a bit of blur; we were all so tired that it was a lot of lazing around and periodic napping.
Sunday was similarly pretty chill. It started with the usual chores and lice checking. I had my first real lice-checking experience. I had only been going through the motions before without much benefit to the girls, but with the assistance of Elvira I finally learned how to recognize the lice. This translated into a killer back and a lot of time spent sitting outside the section as I did a decent job cleaning out a couple girls with pretty bad infestations. I think I prefer ignorance. :-D
That afternoon, the house had a contest among all the sections in which the kids had to make something out of recycled materials. My girls gave up before the contest even began. I think they were still feeling the lack of sleep from the day before. The contest itself was pretty entertaining. Ignacio and Jeremy, back from descanso early, were the judges and went around ranking the different results. Both were hounded by the kids attempting to bribe themselves into first place. The winners: Chicas for their train of milk cartons and Grandes B boys for their version of the White House/Capitol Building (yes, of the USA).
Lunch out by the pool. This is a pretty normal weekend treat.
One of the entries in the recycling contest. I thought this one was pretty cool.
The Grandes B boys' Capitol/White House which won second place. It even came with its own mini Obama who you can just barely see in the dome on top. The boys themselves were covered in white paint.
The above photo is of me, Ignacio, and one of the boys from Medianos. We had dinner outside as well mainly due to the fact that the water shut off sometime that afternoon and remained off until well into the morning of the next day. The kids were all dying of thirst and everyone felt nasty. Dinner was mainly spent chugging as much milk as they could find which helped with the thirst part a little bit. My girls spent the half hour before bed lugging buckets of water from the pool to use to get ready in the morning (whether for personal hygiene or cleaning the room I'm not sure). Thankfully the volunteers' kitchen has a garrafon for our use, but it also made me feel pretty guilty that we had water while most of the house went thirsty. A tough night for everyone and we were all very grateful when the water started running again the next morning.
