Descanso? I´m Confused...

Every other week, we get a weekend break, which means we work 12 days in a row, many of them 12-hour days, with a few breaks, of course. I worked two weekends in a row, however, so that equals 19 days. This past weekend, I had my second ¨descanso¨ (which means break) since coming here in January. Let´s just say having a lot of free time was very...confusing.

As many of you know, I tend to be someone who likes to be, um, busy. I like to have things to do. (Unless you take into account naps, in which case, I am a champ!) So, this past weekend, I really had a lot of downtime, which is a good thing, but it was hard to grasp. The good news is that I showed up at work very rested, and I realized how much I missed the kids.

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When working on weekends, I really have time to bond with the kids that I do not get when they are in school. I made some amazing new friends, including Maru, Sonia, Anaid, Blanca, and Liz. All are amazing girls, and I feel like they are already very close friends. Hugs abound, as do jokes, and I am now being confided in about friend problems, boy problems, etc. It is amazing. Everytime I get to see them, they run up to me and give me huge hugs. I feel like they are becoming some of MY closest friends.

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One girl here reminds me a lot of my friend Susan from college, due to her humor, appearance, and love of books. (Susan, I hope you are reading this!) Her name is Silvia, and she and I have bonded over books. I helped her pick out a new book, Emma, and we have been inseperable since. One night, when I was up in the dorms hanging out, she brought over a photo album that a former volunteer had made for her. What makes this extrordinary is that many of these kids really have nothing to show of their lives when they were younger (no photos, etc.). Silvia had approximately 20 photos from her life, and the volunteer had put them into an album for her. She went through each photo with me and told me about each one. She then came upon one where she had 3 copies of it. She took the extras out, and handed one to me. (I thought she was just trying to show it to me.) She then told me she wanted me to have it. (Gulp...) Wow. I told her I couldn´t take it, but she insisted. It was such a HUGE gift.

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I went to Miacatlán last week for a dinner the volunteers put on for the new kids who come to NPH. At the dinner, there were approximately 15 new children who had come recently, many of them part of larger families that had come. I think one of the things that really strikes me is how protective the older kids are over the younger ones...the older siblings are like little adults. It is hard to see. These kids should be kids, they should have a childhood, which is what NPH hopes to provide. But you see the responsibility they feel in their faces. The younger kids, meanwhile, are carefree. Here are a few pics from that evening.


This family came to NPH two days before I did, so we bonded over that.


This family of four spans the ages of 14 to 6.

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Finally (I promise, this is the last graph!), I have to tell my roommates that they are amazing. Sophie (on the right in this photo) and Naomi (left), thank you for being there for me always. Thank you for always turning off the stove when I forget that I have eggs boiling; thank you for putting up with my numerous naps; thank you for not killing me when I want to chat about our days even though we are all tired; and thank you for knowing how much I love Diet Coke and nail polish!