Look, there are kids here!

So I've been talking a lot about all sorts of things and I haven't mentioned a lot about the actual kids. I do run into children from time to time (try as I might to avoid them) ;) A big part of my job is bringing the kids to the med runs, usually to specialists in different hospitals around Guatemala. It gives me a lot of opportunities to be alone with the kids, which in turn gives me a lot of opportunities to practice my Spanish without worrying about sounding like an ass in front of thirty people. The kids here have all proved to be really sweet so far though, everyone is patient and likes helping me when I forget how to say certain words. Here's a super cute girl that I took to an appointment today. She's so little and really shy, but she's five. We spend a good part of the day making videos on my phone and having piggy back rides around the city.

I need to do another longer post on the differences in our medicine/clinics, but I'll really quickly give you an idea just so you have some context for these photos. People here are really paranoid about sickness spreading, so as soon as a kid shows symptoms of something he's immediately quarantined to the clinic. It's good in one way, though really aggressive. The only thing that bugs me is that these kids are kept in the clinic for days and days and days for something silly. They have nothing to keep themselves busy with, no books, toys, TV; they just lay in bed all day staring out the windows. I try to keep them as entertained as I can because I feel bad for them. Usually I gather the kids together and play DVDs for them on my computer. The other days some kids were in with scarlet fever (surprisingly common here) so every day for three days I played one of the original Star Wars movies for them. It was the first time that any of them had seen it and it was completely hilarious to watch their reactions. The collective gasps when Darth Vader was revealed to be Luke's dad was amazing. Here's a group of kids watching Willow:

The two older kids aren't sick, they're volunteers in the clinic. They're kids from NPH too, they're just doing their year of service before they leave for high school. Kids here only have to go to school until eighth grade. After that they have to give a year of service (año de servicio) back to the orphanage, either by helping watch the little kids or taking on a job somewhere in the agency. After their year is up they can go to high school if they want to. Our two kids right now are Martin and Estella. They're really awesome and hilarious. They help me a ton. (You'll notice they're a lot older looking than eighth graders. That's because the majority of kids here didnt go to school when they lived with their parents before they came here, so a lot of them started first grade when they were 10, 11, 12 years old. Everything here is broken into grade level, not age. You can have a third grade class with 10 year old and 17 year olds together).

Martin

Estella

This little girl was in the clinic for days too. She came up next to me and I asked her what was wrong, she told me she was sick and was taking medication. I saw that she had sweat all over her nose so I figured that she had had a fever that broke. We became pals and spend two days playing and watching movies together. Turns out she wasn't in for a fever, she was in for a horrible case of lice. Damn. So far, I'm clean. It's inevitable though, all the volunteers here get lice at some point...

And here are two of my special needs kids! I'm still getting to know them so i can't say much, other than this kid is adorable. His name is Emmerson

This is Delmi. She usually wears a seizure helmet but other than that seems really with it to me. She's very sweet.

I have lots of stories about other kids, but I'm going to wait until I'm not falling asleep to write them. One of the few things that sucks about the medical appointments is that I have to wake up really friggen early for them (like 430a). I'm beat, time to head to bed! More to follow soon.