Soccer: The Ranch's Favorite Sport

Last Saturday I was blessed with the viewing pleasure of a soccer game. Several months ago my church went out to play soccer with an orphanage in Valle de Angeles. Since I go to church with a house of boys from the Ranch they got to play. The orphanage team was really good, and we lost BAD. Anyways ever since then the boys at the Ranch have been dieing to have the orphanage come out and play. This Saturday that is just what happened. Before the other team came out, our boys formed a team and held practices everyday. They even selected a team captain. Our boys are GREAT soccer players, but since they are not on a real team we rarely see them play as a team. They really came together on this game and played as a team. The practices really payed off. The boys all held their positions and played hard, resulting in a win for the Ranch!!! The Ranch team did awesome, and I have never seen our boys play so well. Afterwards we had hotdogs and chips out at the soccer field. It made for a fun filled Saturday! I hope we do it again sometime soon.

Struttin' their stuff

For the past several months I have been teaching the girls a dance. They have practiced the it with diligence. We have now finished the dance and it looks great. I'm so proud of how hard they have worked. While I was in the States I got dance shoe and skirts for the girls. They really like wearing them. I promised the girls before we preformed the dance that we would do a "photo shoot." So on Monday as promised we took pictures. Here are a few of my favorites.

My Door

For the month of January all the classes at school decorated their doors. The theme was "color." For some insane reason I thought that it would be a fun idea to paint my kids feet and have them walk all over these large pieces of paper . Then paint their chubby little hands and put their hand prints all over the paper. Then I was going to write something super cute and hang that on my door. Well, somehow my insanity did not escape me and that is just what I did, and I have to say that I have the cutest door in the whole school. My kids squealed with delight as I tickled their feet with my paint brush. They were a little scared at first to walk around with paint covered feet but soon grew out of their fears and I could not contain them. As a result I not only had foot prints on paper but all over my clean floor. Then I painted their hands, they loved having their hands painted, putting their hand prints all over the place, washing their hands and asking again to have their hands painted. It was a treacherous cycle that I feared would never end. But their smiling faces made it all worth while. I then stayed up late at night writing "You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have for instance."on the freshly painted paper. The end result was fabulous as you can see, and the process was fun, even if my room was a disaster, and I had to mop up a million foot prints.

Meet Daniel

We have some new members of our class, this is Daniel. Daniel is a very sweet little boy. He has a great imagination, and I enjoy watching him play. His voice is music to my ears. He is very informative. Daniel is smart. He thinks English is "cool" and is eager to learn it. He informs many people that he house mom can speaks both English and Spanish...it is his pride, and gives me great hope that he will pick up English very quickly. Until then he keeps up busy with his precious Spanish. One of the first days he was in the class I was dancing to some children's music and Daniel looked at me and exclaimed "look, the way she dances is like a boy!" (that is a rough translation of what he said.) He has brought a lot of laughter to the class, and I am so thankful to have him.

and Yolibeth

This is Yolibeth. She is Daniel's sister. She is spirited to say the least. She is a delight to me. She smells so sweet. Weather this is true or not I imagine that I was a lot like Yolibeth as a 3 year old. Yolibeth is all smiles, that is until what you want differs from her opinion of what should be taking pace in that moment. She is very stubborn and yes I would even say feisty. I imagine she will grow up to be an incredible woman who will fight for what she believes in. She is a precious little girl and she has warmed my heart. I am honored to have her in my class.

Concrete Floor

Today some of us from the Ranch went down into the community to pour a concrete floor . We had the privilege of helping a family that lives very close to us. We were able to provide them with new floors throughout their whole house. Their house is only two small rooms and before today only had dirt floors. They had a very common house, one made out of mud and covered in plaster. It is not uncommon for people to have dirt floors or for their walls to be made out out a mud brick. Having concrete floors will help to improve there home greatly, and is better for their health, since they will be able to keep it clean. It was my first time to help lay a floor and was a great experience. It was awesome to watch the progress unfold before me. I felt honored that I got to help in such a simple way. I have to admit that it wasn't all work and that there was some play. The bad part is that we were playing in with concrete which got pretty messy. It started when Jhoselyn pushed me in the mud, I retaliated by smearing some concrete on Jhoselyn. It was a nice relief to the work and caused quite a bit of laughter between us. Ron and William also got into it...smearing...and receiving some concrete. It was a tiring day but one filled with joy and purpose.

Back To School

I can't believe that we have just finished our second week being back in school, and that this is the first chance that I have had to sit down to write something! The weeks have flown by. I have racked up hundreds of thing that I want to blog about, but have racked up no time to do it. My kids are precious as always. I was blessed the other day by my kids and reminded of why I love preschool so much. I walked into the room, having put very little effort into getting ready that morning. I had thrown on the first thing I had seen and grabbed something to eat. The moment I walk into my school room I was bombarded with hugs. One by one each kid complemented me..."Oh, Miss Jessi I love your shirt." "Your hair is very beautiful." "I like your shoes." This went on for several minutes as a smile spread across my face. Now I know that I did not look beautiful that day, and that mostly the kids were just trying to out do the other one...so that I might love that child the most. But what they have yet to discover is that there is no way I could love any of them more.