18-2-2011

Yoanca LOVED doing makeup!

Tía Lilith from Germany also had so much fun painting the kids!

I also helped out a bit with hair and makeup.

Carolina and Olga helped the straightening hair part while I tried to fix everything.

Curling eyelashes!

As the music of Lady Gaga started, Ayita opened the HARLi spring-summer 2011 fashion show!

Herlinda walked with so much "fierce"!!!! Bravo!

Leticia closed the HARLi spring-summer 2011 fashion show.

All the models paraded once again.

Designer´s appearance time! First stop, Rafael!

Then, me!

That´s the design of Leticia for Judith.

Carlos Abel´s design for his sister, Cynthia Estefani. Well, most of it was my work but I gave the credit to him, and it was kind of cute they walked down together.

I awarded the three participants whom I thought had showed a lot of dedication and hard work in this project.

The whole crew behind the HARLi show.

The models and I.

The kids were so happy after the show.

My best student, Rafael.

Here is their prize, a special Chinese dinner with me and Lemar´t!

Lemar´t eating which he always loves!

My last day at the home had come. Unplanned, but it was full of events! A friend of mine Chris Wong who has been traveling in South America at the present time called me a couple days ago and asked if we could meet up. Because of my busy schedule, I couldn´t go to Lima to meet him, but we ended up arranging a visit to the home. And he´s a great cook, and I invited him to cook a lunch for the kids. So we started cooking early in the morning after breakfast while I was getting the last things ready for the fashion show in the afternoon. He made a tomato meat sauce with rice and a mango and celery salad. The kids as well as the adults loved the food.

As soon as we finished lunch, all my students along with the volunteers rushed to the therapy room, “the backstage”, to get all the hair, makeup and clothes ready. It was a chaos as expected because we had limited time and there is always something that goes wrong. After over 1.5 hours of hard work, we finally finished and the show started at 16:45 hour. The girls were nervous and so was I, and adrenalines rushed through all our brains. As the music of Lady Gaga´s Poker Face remix started, the “HARLi Spring-Summer 2011” fashion show (the brand name features initials of all the participants´ names) was opened by Ayita, whom I think had the most modelesque look. They all did well and I was so proud of them! When they finished walking and went backstage, they jumped up and down and so did I! We were too excited! Afterwards, the designers were introduced, but it was a bit funny as I totally forgot who designed whose for some of them, but thankfully the kids helped with that. Finally I gave thanks to all the participants for their hardwork and I gave a surprise. I announced three winners whom I thought had showed really good qualities throughout the workshop. Third place was Leticia who always had a positive attitude and concerned about the progress. Second place was Ayita who helped to sew a lot of the clothes regardless whether it´s hers or others and always participated with full energy. First place was Rafael who was my favorite student! He had showed dedication, perseverance and a positive attitude throughout the whole process, and he always loved to learn. So I awarded them a special dinner with us. They were very excited. I also invited Milagros because she helped me the whole day without any condition. And of course Lemar´t was invited without any reason!

Chris helped me cook some of the dishes. Most of them are without meat because Rafa doesn´t eat meat. I made tomato, potatoes and chicken soup, steamed broth egg, stir fried broccoli with garlic, and Chris made stir fried tomatoes and eggs and sweet and sour chicken. We ate in t Chinese style but without chopsticks, but they all loved it. At the end, I encouraged them to keep on doing great work and that they have everything to achieve great things in their lives. They helped with the cleaning up, while I took Lemar´t back to his room. I already felt really sad when I dropped him off with the tías, feeling that I wouldn´t be able to see him for a long time.

The tías from kinder, tía Maria and tía Gadita, knocked on my door later in the night, and asked for my email address and thanked me for all the work I had done. I also thanked them for their collaboration all year. I was surprised to see that tía Maria had tears in her eyes! We chatted about the positive changes the children had and all of them are growing up and well. Indeed, all of them had changed and grown so much! Everyone had been saying so many nice words thanking me for the work that I had done for the kids, while the kids would ask me not to leave or say that Lemar´t would miss me so much. All year of feeling unappreciated suddenly made me realize that it wasn´t true.

16-2-2011

Claudio and Lemar´t were so happy playing the toys.

They enjoyed drinking milk too!

Rafael and I had become quite close after this fashion design workshop.

Lemar´t in his morning class.

He worked very hard too!

Today I had the last day of therapy with Lemar´t and Claudio together. It turned it to be a play therapy instead because I wanted them to have fun and not to worry about behaving perfectly well. We had so much fun and I think it was the best way to end the therapy work. I also made some milk for them which they always loved. On the other hand, I have been really busy with the kids finishing the fashion design project. I had found that you can get to know people really well through sewing! Like last time when I sewed with tía Berta, I got to know her a lot better. This time it was Rafael. Most kids don´t tell us their stories because there isn´t really a reason to tell all out of a sudden. Plus, it probably was something that they don´t want to remember. Rafa doesn´t eat meats now because he saw slaughtering animals a couple years ago in a market and got freaked out by it. So I talked to him about this topic, and he told me that he used to love meat and even loved eating the inside part of chicken bones! At the time at the age of six he was living only with his two brothers, Walter who was only 8 years old and Gregorio only 4. I wondered how they got food and stuff, and he told me that his older brother Walter was working at the time in a shoe repairing stand in the street to earn money for everything. I almost burst into tears when he told me that even though he was pretty calm about it. Every time I think about it, I would want to cry. These three kids are such great boys, and they have a lot of potentials and I just couldn´t bear to think about what they went through when they were little.

13-2-2011

On Sunday, we played splashing water. Lemar´t just splashed water on Julio!

Claudio was soaked!

Marcos was about to splash water on me!

Lemar´t was splashing on me too! By the end of it, I was totally soaked, but it was fun.

Rafael has been working so hard and he has mastered a lot of skills in this workshop!

Me and the whole kínder group.

12-2-2011

Me and my Lemar´t

Me and Marcos, Jenny and Lemar´t.

Cristhian has grown a lot!

Julio with his classic smile.

Claudio came up to me and hugged around me.

Excruciating feeling continues. Well, it´s exactly one week left, and I shall enjoy the rest of the time. This morning, kinder went for a walk, and the tías invited me to go along. Actually they had invited me a few times, but I was too busy to go. This would be my last chance and I do have some free time, so I went along with them. When Lemar´t found out that I was going, he was so excited that he screamed my name from downstairs while I was getting ready. When I came downstairs, he ran up to me with a big grin on his face and hugged me as I carried him to the gate and got going. I will miss him so much! He was with me the whole time, while Marcos was with us as well in the most part of the journey. When we passed a narrow path, a donkey passed by and it pushed Lemar´t down! He was so scared but fortunately he wasn´t injured. I comforted him of course and it was fine. Then, we passed by some workmen who was picking grapes for making pisco, and one was nice enough to give some grapes to us. It was sublime. Half way through, Claudio was clinging on me and so he walked with me and Lemar´t while Marcos got on with the tías. Claudio has been really close to me as well, and always hugs me. While we were in town, I was the official tío to bring them to bathroom, and actually I feel really good about taking one after another as I felt that they want me to care about them and I am more than happy to take care of them. At dinner time, Lemar´t recited all the things that we saw and what happened at our walk. He has grown so much, and I really cherish every moment with him. It feels bittersweet when he smiles and looks really contented as he sees me. On top of him, there are so many kids that are very hard to say goodbye. It´s pretty ironic that all these times when I felt so frustrated that I just wanted to leave, and when it actually happens, it´s really really hard!

9-2-2011

The kids showed me that they had washed their hands.

Julio and Marcos were playing dogs and horses.

Lemar´t pretended to be a dog biting Claudio.

Claudio pretended to be a dog as well.

Me and Ayita.

"It´s the end of an era, Ryan!" said John, my roommate in the past year who left today. Indeed it´s the end of an era after he has left and I will be leaving soon as well, and there are the new volunteers here. After we all took a photo together, we said goodbye to John and got him on the bus. As we walked back, our driver Jhonatan hugged me really tightly from behind while Kevin grabbed my right arm tightly as well, saying "we have to captivate him." It´s always hard to say goodbye, especially after developing such relationships with so many people. Like I said to the kids at our farewell party, there have been ups and downs in the past year, but it´s just because we are a family, and families have to deal with the goods and the bads as well.

In the afternoon, I was just supposed to have therapy with Jhosmelyr, but the kids kept asking me if they can have therapy. So I decided to do two group sessions with them, and they were so excited that they could be in therapy. The older kids also have been really intimate with me, often giving me hugs or wrapping around my arm or hugging me from behind. I really have no idea how I could deal with my leaving.

On the other hand, the fashion design project is going really well. I found out that we have a little sewing machine at the home, just that there´s no needle. So I asked Brígida to get the needle from Lima last weekend, and it´s working really well and helping tremendously with the progress! I taught Héctor to sew, and he has so much fun using the sewing machine. I really love when I see them work and be interested in something useful. I do hope that there is more stuff like this for them more often. It´s not just developing skills, but also helping them to boast up their self-esteem, self-confidence and learn to be creative and perseverant.

4-2-2011

Rafael tracing the pattern for a dress. He is my best student. I love when he told me that it´s so much harder than he thought, but then he kept doing it and working really hard. I will miss him a lot! He said when he´s in the year of service and saved enough money, he will buy a laptop and try to communicate with me through internet. How sweet!

Ayita loves the class and is one of the best sewers.

Everyone was sewing and stitching. I love it!

My favorite gift from my leaving party, a tee full of the kids writing.

The back of the tee with handprints of the little kids. So sweet!

This has almost been come to the end, and I have been doing therapy, teaching the fashion design class and simply hanging out with the kids. The fashion class goes very well, and I have got some really good students who work quite hard and are very interested to learn. It´s tough work as we don´t have enough time and everyone basically always asks for my help. But it´s good that I enjoy doing it, which makes it a lot of fun, especially I can spend more quality time with the kids. I have been spending more time with them trying to finish the dresses and teach them more skills. The fashion show will be in two weeks, and hopefully we can finish all the dresses soon!

Today it was a farewell party for me and John, and the kids danced, sang and presented gifts for us. They almost gave us some gifts, including a painting, a NPH mug and a tee shirt full of handprints and some messages the kids wrote on it. It was really sweet, but I will be so crushed when I leave......can´t think about that right now...

1-2-2011

Ángela and Jenny wearing twins tee!

Julio and me with my Lemar´t clinging on me of course.

Jenny and me, with Tío John in the background. What the heck was he doing?!!!

Ángela and me. Lemar´t far far away!

Me and my Marcos.

Me and my Claudio.

Me and my Mily.

Rafael took this funny picture for us. Thalia was between us while Julisa on the left.

Me and my little Franklin.

Me and Kevin. He likes me carrying him like a baby from the dining room, walking up the stairs, and put him onto his bed!

Me and Gregorio making faces.

Me and Benito. He´s wearing the tee that my sister donated, which fits him perfectly as he loves football.

The three little sheeps getting reading to dance.

Alcides was the giant. I made his beard and the crown.

But at the end they were frozen and stood there, except Ángela who danced through the song.

Time flies and it´s already February. It´s so long due for my blog update, but I have not had much energy updating now because I´m leaving soon. It´s kind of a mixed feeling. On one hand, I feel relieved that I can finally get back to some normality in life, but on the other I feel so sad leaving the kids. They have been asking me when I am leaving, and when I told them, their faces turned blue. It´s so heartbroken and I don´t know how I could deal with it at all.

Two weeks ago Father Philip came to visit our home again since March last year. It´s good to see him again. He was happy to see the volunteers are still around, and he thanked us for contributing to the home. And we had a few events going on while he was here. He did a mass on Saturday, then we had a barbeque on Sunday afternoon. Monday was his leaving party. Kínder prepared a dance about David and the giant, which was super cute. I helped them make the costumes and their rehearsals. But at the end, all of them had stage fright and they froze! It was a shame because it was super cute!

Last weekend I took Lemar´t out for an outing therapy session. He was very excited that we went out. While we were on the car, a man came in on the road, and Lemar´t pointed at the guy´s pants and said, "¡Sucio!!" (he pronounced it "jujo" which means "dirty") And he repeatedly said it so I had to calm him down as it was quite embarrassing! Hopefully people in the car didn´t understand him!