Friday May 20, 2011

I had cornflakes and bananas for breakfast. I asked if it was common there too and it was :) which I love. I went to school and I helped the kids learn today. I also played outside. The kids also love reading books with me.

I learned some more about Common Hope too. It was started 15 years ago and works with the villages around Antigua. To find kids to help they would go to the wash basins where the natives wash their clothes and approached the mothers if they needed help or not. They needed a certain amount so they could get financial help from the goverment. Now what they do is wait for the parents to come to Common Hope because they found that the people need it most and they aren´t getting a free ride. Before some of the people started expecting to recieve whatever they wanted. They also get referrels from teachers at the public schools because they have a good relationship. The teachers know which children are struggling by their clothes, whether or not they bring food, shoes, and if they show up or not. The teachers contact Common Hope if a student does not show up for a week. They want to know why the child isn´t attending school and fix it. It is usually because of bus fare, which is only 20 cents US, no shoes, or the parents want the kids to help around the house. Each month they spend $100 on each kid. They also sometimes have a waiting list of 300 kids. They rank the kids on need basis as to who recieves help. There is a list of categories and the children that only fulfil one don´t get on the list and then they are ranked accordingly with who has the most categories. They have an annual budget of $3.8 million and get 47% from private donors. So far it seems like a great organization. I am having a tour of it soon.

School was nothing new... just kept learning.

At home, the kids, Natalie and Emily started opening up to me more. After dinner they asked me if I like to play with barbies, of course I HATE IT, but said I LOVE barbies. Then we played a game of Bancopoly which is the Guatemalan eqivillant of Monopoly with all Guetmalan properties. I asked if it was similar to monopoly and of course they said no even though there was a pass go get 200, go to jail, waterworks, community chest. And they played wrong and took money from the bank to buy their properties because they were the banker... So then when I tried to lose because I needed to go to bed, I an out of money and couldn´t pay for landing on their property, they said I could take money from the bank to pay them. I saw it was going no where so I had to tell them myself that I had to go to bed. Although I hate cheaters and not playing by the rules and barbies, it was really fun hanging out with them for the night.