A Beautiful Day with the Peruvians

Today we got the chance to travel and meet local Peruvian children. Our first stop was a home for girls in Peru that have no home to live in or have been abused. It was amazing to see how people with so little make their homes so beautiful - the girls had transformed their home into a colorful, comfortable place, most of their decorations were crafted from recycled materials like water bottles. While at the house, we began to prepare crafts and gifts to bring to the local school.

We walked down the street and were soon greeted by friendly Peruvians at the school. Ryan and James began to work with them on a new garden, and Stephanie, Mickayla, and I got to go to a classroom and help the children each paint their own Arbol de Vida (tree of life). The raices (roots) of the tree represented where they came from (ex: su casa, su familia, sus amigos), and the leaves were seperated into four parts: temores (fears), gustos (likes), valores (values), and metas/suenos (goals/dreams). The children were shy at first, but soon warmed up to us and bombarded us with questions (what's your name, where are you from, what music do you listen to - all in spanish of course) and soon I was translating/writing English sentences in their notebooks for them to practice later. Soon they all began to want autographs from us and we were all signing scraps of paper, notebooks, and arms! After we left the classroom and went into the school yard, we were soon surrounded by a group of children with more questions, and they followed us every where we went. It was so fun getting to talk with them - they all had such unique and wonderful personalities. The goodbyes involved lots and lots of hugs and pictures!

After we were done at the school, we went back to the home for the girls and got to eat lunch with them. They thought our names were so funny - I had to keep spelling mine over and over! They wanted to know things about our lives and giggled when we had no idea what they were saying.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to meet these beautiful children and girls. Being able to give our time to them and make them smile is a feeling like no other!