Escape! (pics)

I wanted to put that title in spanish, but unfortunately, "I escaped!" translates in Spanish into Escape! You have to imagine the accent on the second e.

I´m worried, because I´m loosing my English. This would be a great thing if I were replacing my English with Spanish, but that is not actually the case. Within a few weeks, I will be completely mute. And the world will rejoice.

So, today marks my fourth full day working at Casa Guatemala. To be honest, it´s been up and down. The upside is that many of the volunteers at the Casa are quite nice, interesting, and reasonable people, and not one of them has insisted that I pour them a rum and coke. Also, the kids really are lovely, and ridiculously friendly. They come up to me and ask me my name, although they frequently can´t understand it. The other plus side is that two littlers of piggies have been born in since I´ve been there. Piglets are ugly and scrawny, but in a really cute way.
Another upside is that I've been spending a lot of time with the baby, Dulce Maria, and she´s quite fond of me. Cheka and I have been tag teaming taking care of her, and Cheka has been sleeping with her.

The down side is that every day seems to be a game of what will Leah clean up off of the floor next. Don't read this next part if you've got a weak stomach. Okay, so Casa Guatemala is not exactly equipt to deal with babies. They used to have babies there at some point, but for whatever reason, most of the kids are between the ages of 4 and 14. We have little Dulce Maria there as sort of a special circumstance. Her mom grew up at the orphanage, so much for follow through, and is working at the hotel. So Dulce is there. The problem is, they don't have basic things a baby needs. Like diapers. Little Dulce spent Monday night sleeping with a tshirt fashioned as a diaper. This would not be so bad, except that little Dulce is a sick little puppy, and has a lot of runny poopies. Tshirt do not so much hold runny poopies. So I spent Tuesday morning cleaning baby poop up off the floor. The room that little Dulce sleeps in with Cheka is a big quiet room that used to house the chiquitas when Casa Guatemala housed chiquitas. Nobody really lives there now, except for rats which they are currently trying to get rid of by poisoning them. Today Cheka found to dead rats under her bed. Because she did not find them right away, they were accompanied by a family of maggots. Being the nice person that I am, I clean up the guts and maggots today for Cheka. So we've got baby poop, rat guts, and next, anybody's guess. Sorry folks, I just wanted to get that off my chest.

IT'S SAFE TO READ NOW.

Anyhow. When I'm not taking care of the little one or mopping the floor, I'm working in the kinder class. They just split kinder and pre kinder, and if all goes well, I'll be working with 6 little ones between the ages of 18 months and 4 years. I was not really feeling the love, but today one of the little ones, named Kristi
in fact, climbed onto my lap and fell alseep. I also made up a song in Spanish to the tune of ring around the morning, and I'm writing a good morning song to the tune of Are You Sleeping Brother John.

So it's good. That being said, I make deals with myself to stay one day at a time. Adjustment is hard. Everyone says it gets easier and better with time, and I'm hoping it's true. I'm by no means miserable, I'm just not quite sure why I'm here...

I'll try to post pictures soon!