Pro Niños (and other random stuff)

First off, sorry that I've been here for two weeks and seem to be averaging one post a week. I figured trying to keep a blog might end with me making very occasional posts and it appears I was right. Whoops.

Now something entertaining that I forgot to include in my last post. Last week, I ate a vegetarian gringa. That was when I discovered that gringa is not only a name for a foreigner, it is also a delicious food (at least in vegetarian form). Needless to say, I (and everyone I was with) was very entertained by the fact that I was a vegetarian gringa eating a vegetarian gringa.

We moved into the apartment last Thursday. It's an apartment for volunteers who work at Fundación Pro Niños de la Calle (the project I'm volunteering at). There will also be another apartment in the same building, but it is still being worked on, so we have all our furniture plus theirs. Needless to say, it's a bit crowded and a bit of a mess. This is what it looked like when we moved in:

me and Mona's room before we moved in

the kitchen (yes, there was so much stuff in there that it was impossible to walk in)

The people living in the apartment are me, Mona (my roommate; German), Felix (German), Matthias (German), Yazmin (Swiss) and Angelica (Swiss). This is what the apartment looks like now. The main room is oddly similar (but half of it is organized), so I didn't take another picture of it.

Me and Mona's room. It's very messy. And we're still using our sleeping bags because we haven't washed the sheets yet and they are of questionable cleanliness. 

Our dresser and a bit of our closet

More of the closet (although you can't see all of it (silly door), you can tell it's size)

The bathroom. There's a bucket in the shower because this morning the water in the building ran away so Matthias grabbed a bucket full of water to bathe with.

Now onto Pro Niños. Well, one very interesting thing I discovered on Saturday was that I shouldn't actually be there because they aren't supposed to accept ICYE volunteers, but since they already accepted me, I can stay. And since there aren't any other projects in D.F. (and I want to stay in D.F.) and I like the project and the people there, I'm going to stay.

On Friday, we went to Pro Niños to get to know more about it. We watched a short video about it and filled out some forms. (If you want to learn more about the organization than I mention here, check out their website - there is both a Spanish version and an English version: http://www.proninosdelacalle.org.mx/). After that, we all (meaning the four of us volunteering at Pro Niños through SIIJUVE) went with educators to experience the street portion of the program. I was with an educator and Yazmin (one of the roommmates. She's been here for 2 months already and has spent almost all of that time working in the street portion of the project). We walked around a few areas, looking for kids and then met with some kids they had previously worked with and talked or played games with them.

On Monday and Tuesday, we worked in the day center (this is where I will be working for the first 4 months). The kids either arrive there on their own or are picked up by a volunteer from the shelter they stay at (almost all of them are in the group that stay at a government run shelter). Then they shower, get dressed, wash their clothes, have a small amount of free time before breakfast, have some structured activities, eat lunch and more (brief) structured activities. Most of the time is scheduled because one of the goals of this stage is to provide the kids with structure. We found out on Monday that each day a different volunteer takes the group of kids described above to the center and another takes them back. Usually just one volunteer does this, but me and Felix went together to get used to it. I have absolutely no idea how it's possible for one person to keep an eye on all 8 or so of those rowdy kids. Luckily, one of the kids is super helpful (I'm also a fan of him because he's really interested in languages and keeps asking me and the Germans for different words in English and German). Even with his help, we got separated from about half the kids. They separated and we were waiting for them, but one of the kids got on the metro and since that kid was younger, we followed him instead of waiting for the others. I asked the helpful kid (I'm going to try to avoid naming the kids in this blog) if it was okay that this happened and he said technically no, but it happens almost every day. Because of dropping the kids off after, Monday's work day ended up being from 9am to about 5:30 - 5:45pm, with no breaks other than brief bathroom breaks (we eat breakfast and lunch with the kids). Tuesday started off with a weekly 8am meeting then the day proceeded fairly normally. Except for the part where one of the kids (who is older so I thought he was volunteer) was hitting on me and Mona all day and invited me to a hotel. I declined. Repeatedly. If it continues the next time I see him, I'll talk to my supervisor, but I don't think it will. Then we ended the day with a meeting of the volunteers in the day center (it's very hard not to say centro de día). So Tuesday ended up being from 8 to 5:30.

Wednesday, we went to the casa de transición (transition house; this week is really about getting to know all the stages of the program). It was super relaxing in comparison to both the other stages we worked in. There weren't very many kids there (depending on what stage they're at, they have the option to leave during the day) and there were lots of volunteers. There, we ate breakfast and lunch with the kids. The day there is still structured somewhat but with much more free time and more general categories in the schedule such as "studying." I helped a 19 year old work on his reading skills. He could read, just very slowly and some of the letters (like "c") are harder for him. For those of you who took Spanish phonetics with me, you know that there are pretty specific rules for whether it sounds like /s/ or /k/ (and fairly straightforward), so I tried to explain those a little but it didn't really help very much. Funny story time: at one point during one of our breaks (reading out loud gets really tiring without breaks), he asked me "¿Estás casada?" (are you married?) but I heard "¿Estás cansada?" (are you tired) so I answered "un poquito" (a little bit). Needless to say, there was some confusion. He asked how I could be a little bit and then he repeated what he said and I said what he heard and we both started laughing really hard. It was hilarious. At the end of the day, I also got to help a little bit in an English lesson.

This morning we had our first Spanish language class (technically, we're supposed to have them before we start working, but Mexico is pretty disorganized and everyone in D.F. is good enough in Spanish that the lessons aren't urgent). Then we went to Pro Niños and worked on the street again.

Also, I woke up early this morning so I could shower in the morning (I've been showering at night because there are so many of us) and wear my hair down. Except there was one flaw in the plan. There is no water in the building. Me and Mona just went up to the roof and put 5 buckets up there (it's raining - which is expected for this time of year) in case we still don't have water tomorrow. We really need to bathe.We also really need to flush the toilet, but there's nothing we can do about that right now.

Tomorrow, we have another lesson and then will go to start the visa process (also technically, we're not supposed to go out on the street without it because our visitor visa doesn't allow us to volunteer, but they've never had problems before so we're fine).