Field trip

This last week we had a short term team of 8 here. On Thursday I took the day off of Spanish and hung out with them. The biggest part of the day was visiting a children´s nutrition center. A nutrition center is not a hospital. They care for malnurished kids aged 0-5. Some live there and another part is like a daycare center. Most of the kids have 8 or 9 brothers and sisters or they are orphans. It was really hard because the kids don´t smile hardly at all. No laughing, no one bouncing off the walls. They are there to get better and then they move on. One baby I was holding was so skinny... and mad at the world it seemed. He was probably only 2or 3 months old. I think it was time for him to eat. I had to leave him screaming in his crib. The center and a hospital were founded by a family that got rich off the mines in Bolivia and suprisingly enough, gave back to Bolivia. They are very professionally run, they have child councelors, students of psycology, and nutritionists all on stuff. They disinfect everything, make their own clothes for the kids, measure all the food and monitar every child very closely. Yet they are starved for affection. You look at a child in a crib and they just start crying cause they want to be picked up. We helped to feed them lunch. A lot of the kids in the daycare are sick with coughs and whatnot. My girl could hardly eat between coughing fits. She eventually threw up a little and I called it quits. What the point if she can´t keep it down cause of the cough. Regardless, it was a very eye opening day as the facilities look like they were transplanted here from the states. Maybe at some future time I might be able to go back there and just hold those babies!

I was also able to help the team a good deal with their tourist shopping in La Concha. It felt really good to know that I know enough spanish that I can finally be of a help to my team! Praise the Lord!