Los Patojos

Well all is going well in Antigua. I´ve quickly managed to fill my days up. I spend the mornings in spanish school, or better put banging my head against the wall trying to figure out and remember spanish grammar.

I managed to catch the second half of Barak´s (I like that for the first time I feel comfortable refering to the president on a a first name basis. He just kinda feels like one of the boys you know) inaguration speach, and partly because of the inspiration from this I decided to try to do my part and signed up to volunteer at an after school program for disadvantaged children.

The name of the program is ¨Los Patojos,¨ which is Guatemalan slang for ¨The Children.¨ The program is located in Jocotenango, which is Antigua´s neighboring city, and apparently has become a bit of a distribution center for drug trafficing in Central America and Mexico. For this reason there are alot of kids that are neglected by their families.

As for the program itself, I couldn´t be in suport of it more. The director is a young guy, couldn´t be more than 30, named Juan Pablo. He´s the absolute perfect person to run a program like this. He´s full of energy and loves to play with the kids. He knows how to relate to all the ages, as there are kids from about the age of 4 all the way to high schoolers, and you can tell they all have a strong affinity for him. However, when neccesacry he knows how to be serious with them in a way to get them to respond and not alienate them.

His focus in the program seems to be not just to help the kids in their studies but also to instill a strong sense of morality, community, and dignity in the children. As many of the kids are the children of drug dealers and people otherwise involved in that world a big focus of the program is to educate the kids about all the other possibilites that exist. The best part is that the program is completely free and is funded entirely by donations.

In the first few days I haven´t had any specific responsibilities other than just playing with the kids. You quickly see that kids the world over are the same. Full of energy and love to play. They´re constantly wanting to jump on my back, or sit on my lap. The other day I seriously rope burned my hand trying to take on about ten of them in tug-o-war.

Juan Pablo asked me to teach a daily English class to the group of kids from 9-12 years old. I´m excited to start but at the same time a bit nervous as I´ve never really taught anything to anyone. But I figure no matter what I do the kids are bound to learn something. Keeping their interest will probably be the hardest part, So I´ve just got to go in their confident and wanting to have a good time. That being said if anyone´s got ideas for games and the such my ears are open.