The Dancing Nuns

Yesterday, Megan, Warner, Ashley, and I went back to visit the dancing nuns. Basically, three nuns live in this house, but one of them is 96 years old, so there's really only two of them that can do stuff. And so every day after school 12-25 kids around ages 7 or 8 go to their house and the nuns review what they learned in school,  play with them, and feed them a meal. They all come from the poorest neighborhoods, and they're also all the worst behaved. One nun explained that they're all so unruly and poorly behaved because that's the environment that they grew up in, and so she's also trying to teach them to be more organized and better behaved.

So basically, it's a group of wild, ill-behaved, high risk, 8 year olds. So when we got there we split them up into three groups. Then Ashley and I took one group of four kids, Megan and Warner took one, and. the nuns took one. Oh my goodness. It was SO hard.

Basically, we were supposed to teach them about the letter "ñ". Which doesn't even exist in English, but that's okay because we were teaching in Spanish. At one point, a little girl named Genesis asked Ashley a question, and Ashley didn't understand what she said, so Ashley just said, "Si." And then all four of the kids bolted out of the classroom and we had no idea what just happened haha. Apparently, Genesis asked Ashley if she wanted her to go get her another marker for the whiteboard, and then they all raced to go get it.

And another little boy (we don't know his name, he kept telling us it was Micheal Jackson) would cut off the circulation to his hand and then once his hand was really pale he would tell us that now he looked like us.

These kids would get up and hit each other all the time, so pretty much Ashley was in charge of keeping them from fighting and guarding the door so they couldn't escape, while I taught the lesson. It was so hot in that classroom. Nobody here has air conditioning, except for a few banks and one grocery store (we end up going to the bank a lot haha it's just so nice inside!) So of course, they don't have air conditioning. They do have a couple fans, which is nice. But by the end of the lesson I was still dripping sweat.

Then it was time for recess. Oh my heck, they went crazy.

And then we got to dance again. The nuns are choreographing this dance for the kids to perform for their mothers on Mother's Day (May 30th down here). Helping them learn the dance is so much fun! Here's a quick little video.

The nun is so funny. She keeps those kids in line. After recess she was counting to ten, and by ten they had to be seated. But one kid kept screaming in between each number she said. So she grabbed him, put her hand over his mouth and put him in this kind of head lock until she was finished counting.... Next time she counted, he didn't scream.

At one point she also got out a mop, and at first I though she might beat them with it, but instead she would just put the nasty  wet mop on their feet if they started talking while she was.

Then, while we were dancing, one boy didn't want to be partners with a specific girl and he tried to move down the line to avoid being across from her. That nun made him be partners with her and gave him a good lecture on how that girl was just the same as any other girl and he was not going to try and have a preference over girls.

After two and a half hours, we were exhausted, so it was nice when we got to sit down and listen to them pray for fifteen minutes. After awhile some of the kids started to lay down during the prayers. Then the other nun asked them, "Who here is 80 years old?" And they all pointed to the 96 year old nun in the wheelchair, and the nun said, "Nope. She's 96. But she's still sitting up straight- so you guys can too."

Basically, the nuns are awesome. The kids are rambuntuous, but cute. I was talking with our country director, and I think I'm going to end up being project lead over our work with the nuns and their after school program, and I'm really excited.

Also, we had our first rainstorm last night! It rained so hard! All the streets flooded, but only for like an hour. Also, I don't remember if I already mentioned that half our hallway is outside. So it was refreshing to have it rain in our house too haha

I hope you guys are all doing well!