Costa Rica: Casa De Los Ninos (The House of the Children)

We sure love these kids! We had a lot of fun with them. I wish I could go back and see how they are doing. It is incredible how different my circumstances were growing up compared to these children. They sometimes go to school, but it is not enforced. They live in shacks that look like they will fall down any moment. Many of them wear the same clothes everyday, all of which look very used. Inside the Casa the tables and benches are made of tile, which is extremely slippery when it rains, which is almost every day. The children could not comprehend that I didn't speak Spanish, but somehow we still were able to communicated well enough that I could play with them and have a good time. Tyler enjoyed playing with the kids a lot except for when they cheated at Uno which they did every single game. The workers (usually about 3 women) all volunteered there, most of them did so in order to get a free meal for themselves. Jorge was the director and he even was a volunteer and would come every single day. He cared so much for these kids and did his best to teach them manners and be a good role model to them and at times be someone for them to answer to when they were not behaving. He did not allow any cussing, stealing or fighting. He also did not allow any males over the age of 16 to be there. We loved our time there and we both agree it was the best part of our trip.
Here is another email sent to our families:

5/31
So yesterday was just wonderful but very tiring which you could probably see by my lack of grammar and spelling. Something I forgot to tell you... it rained here harder than I have ever experienced rain before. Only for about an hour but Tyler and I got stuck in the rain walking to the bus stop. Our shoes were soaked through even though we bought umbrellas.  Another thing that is somewhat disturbing is you cannot flush toilet paper down the toilet. The pipes are too small and so it will clog. Every bathroom has a trash in it that you put your used toilet paper, gross huh? There is no such
thing as pedestrians have a right of way here. The driving is crazy and you pretty much cannot expect a car to slow down for you. This morning I was awoken by a lot of talking, like A LOT...it could have been in our room it sounded like but no it was right outside our widow. The walls here are paper thin you can hear everything through them. Well anyways I go to look outside our window and there are like 20 taxis covering the street and all the drivers standing around chatting. I had no idea why either. OH by the way this was 2:30 in the morning. Later Tyler and I found out that a few houses down they have parties sometimes and so the taxis wait to see if people need rides. But they have no consideration for people sleeping. They finally left around 3.
The food here is alright... its nothing gross or fancy, pretty bland though. We had hot dogs for the meat in the stew. Lots of rice and black beans. Even the punch is different. The milk it cold, but it lasts for for well over a month, kind of weird. For dinner tonight we had rice with black soup(its like bean broth or something) and then there are hard boiled eggs that are in the soup. Interesting, but bland still. Today it rained the majority of the day, but just lightly. We went to the grocery store this morning and found out the some things are more expensive here than in the states like shampoo it cost like $5 for a smaller bottle that what you would normally get. Cereal is also around $5. Crazy huh? of course we are in a nicer part of the city which makes it more expensive. We were able to get ice cream pops for 25 cents though. The children today were a little different. Some that came yesterday weren't there which is too bad. Tyler and I realized how much these children need guidance in their lives. We tried to play Uno with them but they are cheaters and play by their own rules and it is just chaotic. Even in dominoes this one boy cheats all the time, its really sad they can't even enjoy an honest game, they really try to get away with anything they can. The Uno cards and a set of dominoes were both stolen by the end of the day. It was too bad. But we still enjoyed seeing the kids smiling faces and try to help them show respect for one another.
That's it for today. Love from Costa Rica!

Clare&Tyler