2 great weeks at the Casa

Dear friends and family,

Well, it´s been a busy 2 weeks at Casa Guatemala for Lyds and I.

I had to look after the Varone Grandes by myself for 10 days as my partner (Patricia) went on her break. I was a bit worried about how things would go at first, (given that she´s usually the hard hand and also a natural Spanish speaker), but in the end it was the best thing that happened for me. I got a lot closer to the boys and was forced to speak and learn a lot more Spanish in a short period. The boys were great and I think they took to my ¨more relaxed¨ style of leadership.

For the first 6 days I had the full 28 boys which meant that my days went really fast as I was constantly - tending to scrapes and cuts, making sure they did their chores, breaking up fights....yet still taking some quality time for some solid foozeball playing. The only bad thing has been that because I was on my own, we couldn´t leave the Casa for 2 weeks. We love it here, but we cherish our brief time on the net each week to catch up on what it going on in the rest of the World.

It was Guatemalan Independence day during the week, so for the second part of the 10 days, their was a 4 day weekend and I went down to only 13 boys. (Casa Guatemala is a true orphanage, but they also take a lot of kids whose parents are basically just too poor to look after them for the whole week).

The week leading up to Independence Day was great as there were a lot of activites for the Kids, and for 5 days straight they did performances and dances to celebrate. Overall a great week.

We are both certainly finding that the days are going by faster, and it´s a lot more fun interacting with the kids as we get to know them and they get to know us better each day.

Here´s our latest slideshow...


If you can´t see the above gallery, check out the link here - Recent Pics