El Primero Semana con los Niños

The first week with the kids... Last week the kids finally started at Centro Maya and I´ve now gotten into somewhat of a routine living here. I´ve been going every week day at 8am to the center, which is about a 10 minute walk from the house where I´m living. I meet some other people there and then we go in either a mini bus or a pickup truck to San Pablo, another one of the villages on the lake (about 4 or 5 km away) and pick up kids there that attend the center. Right now there are a lot of smaller children that come for physical therapy so the women teachers and assistants handle them while I generally help get Domingo, a 14 year old that uses a wheelchair, in and out of the bus or truck. Then once we get all the kids from San Pablo to the center, classes and therapy starts around 9am. I do random tasks and help whoever needs some help at the time.
Lately I´ve been doing some muscle and balance exercises with one of the kids that one of the physical therapists showed me how to do. So that´s been pretty cool. Otherwise I help feed the kids at snack time and then help with brushing teeth after snacks. Then around noon I go back to San Pablo in the bus or pickup and take the kids back to their houses. We had cake on one of the afternoons to celebrate being back in school. It was pretty delicious- lots of fresh fruits on it.
Domingo, pictured in the last two photos above, just started going to school in the afternoons at the public school in San Pablo after his morning activities at the center. Guatemala just passed a law that says all public schools have to allow children with handicaps attend. Thats definitely a good thing, but they really don´t have much in the way of infrastructure to make that happen. Since there are no ramps at the public shool in San Pablo someone has to carry Domingo up the stairs and someone else has to carry the wheelchair. It´s definitely not an easy process getting him started there and getting the routine down to get him there but hopefully it´ll get easier every day.
So when I get back from San Pablo around 1pm or so, I pretty much have the rest of the afternoon free. Generally I cook myself lunch, do dishes, laundry, read, lay in my hammock or hang out with some of the other volunteers. It´s definitely a pretty relaxing lifestyle and a huge change of pace from the go go go pace of life at home. I always have something to do here, but theres never too much.