Volunteering in Lumbisi

Por fin, I will actually talk about the volunteer work I do twice a week... with craaazy crazy children, that makes me very happy :)

So, every Monday & Wednesday, I take the Lumbisi bus at around 2:30 (they come about 20-25 minutes apart, so I usually sit at the bus stop for a while listening to the ice cream (pop-ice in the u.s. a.k.a. bon-ice here and yogoso, the 5 cent more yogurty healthier version) people selling stuff in their awesome jumpsuits). I arrive at the school at 3:00 and stay until 5, when we usually wait some more for the bus and I get home around 5:45. Today I was super lucky because when I went to the bus stop, Lumbisi was the first one to come, and then I had to leave a bit early from volunteering at 4ish to buy our bus tickets to go on CARNAVAL VACATION!

Anyways... so pretty much every day there are a decent amount of kids who have some homework to do, but there are always some kids who don't have any. My job lately has been to distract the ones who don't have any work with some sort of activity so that they don't stop their friends/siblings from finishing their 'deberes'. What I started off doing was bringing my handy-dandy iHome (small version, easy for travel, battery powered) and my iPod, and teaching the kids Concordia dances (from Spanish summer camp, in case you're not familiar) including El Tiburon, Ritmo Vuelta, Magdalena, Alane, and the Macarena (that one's not so Concordia as much as popular culture). I was planning on doing some more activities on other days, like some cute name games, or a game we did at concordia with animals (cat, elephant, eagle.... if anyone wants to learn I can teach it to them sometime). But these kids are obsessed with my music! Besides dancing we've also listened to some Juanes, Aventura, and OMG High School Musical! (the girls loooove it a bit too much, I don't even remember how it got on my iPod, i swear)

I've also had to do a little disciplining (that doesnt seem like it's a real word...) to 3 troublesome boys. We've got Washington, the worst of the 3, who always thinks it's hilarious to do exactly what we don't want him to do, Kevin (go figure, hah) who is pretty nice but sometimes picks on really little kids who just cry as a reaction and he thinks it's funny, then there's another boy (he doesn't come every day, don't remember his name) and he just copies everything Washington does. I tried one day to implement the "naughty step" (escalera mala?) from my Nanny 911 lessons, but to no avail. I think I picked a bad location, because if I put one boy down and told them to sit on the step for a minute while I tried to make them understand why what they did was wrong, the other boys would come by and bug us, then the boy on the stair would escape. It was a bit frustrating, but eventually I came up with an idea that they should pick on me instead of picking on little kids, and that worked, i just gave them piggy-back rides and ran around the playground trying to "get away" for the rest of the time.

The compelation of this "after school program" is kids everywhere from age 1 to age 14 or so. Some kids bring their siblings, so there are some little ones running around, and a lot of the kids go to different schools, but they all live in Lumbisi. The program is run by FEVI, a foundation that my coordinator, Maria, is the founder(/president?) of, and the coordinator of this specific program's name is Andres, but it's been weird because he hasn't been showing up in the last 2 weeks that I've been working. The woman who is always there (she's amazing, and she brings her 2 kids with her) is Maria (a different one) and she lives in Lumbisi. I feel terrible that I can't be there more often, because then I think she's alone with up to 22 kids, all doing different things, and, you know, being kids. That's on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I have aerobics so I can't go. Now there's also another girl from the university that comes on Wednesdays a little later than me (Jessica) and she's very sweet and has lots of fun with the kids. It's hard work, but SO worth it, they're all just adorable (even the traviesos).

Bueno, I'll update when I get back from vacay! I need to get AWAY from Quito, it's cold and rainy :( Playa here we come!!!


P.S. Zack, if you're reading this, my excessive use of parentheses, and parentheses within parentheses, came from reading your blog and then immediately writing mine... it rubbed off I guess.