Alright, as much fun as it is to talk about Steve, I imagine my Canadian friends and family would appreciate hearing something about what I've been doing here for the last week, apart from harassing Steve electronically. The time has come to introduce you to the children of Hogar Amiguitos.

Those who recieved my support letter should now be thinking, "Huh? I thought the place was called Casa Amistad!" Well, my astute friends, that would be wrong, and for two reasons:

1) I made a typo in my support letter, and wrote "Casa" Amistad, instead of "Hogar" Amistad. Casa means house, hogar means home, so it was an honest and more or less insignificant mistake.

2) The Children of Destiny Nicaragua website calls this home "Hogar Amistad", which means "home of friendship", while the actual name for the centre is "Hogar Amiguitos*", which means "home of little friends." Again, an almost irrelevant difference in the English.

However, as a result of these two factors, it turns out that no part of the name I was using for the orphanage in my support letters was right. Spanish - 1. Kelly - 0.

Alright, digressions aside, there are 19 children who call this place home, ranging in ages from 9-18. The kids at the orphanage kind divide naturally into several different groups, those being:
- the little girls (one 7-year-old, and one 8-year-old)
- the boys (ranging in ages from 9-13, but generally operating as one unit)
- Adan (our youngest boy, having just turned 9 last Sunday, Adan falls into his own category for reasons to be explained later)
- the big girls (sharing a room with the little girls, they are 11 and 12)
- las muchachas ("the teenage girls" - as well as having a different scholastic schedule,
they have different privileges and responsities from the younger kids); and
- Ana. (Ana also falls into her own category for reasons to be explained later).

Today I'll tell you a bit about our two little nine-year old girls:

Luz and Xochilt are adorable, mischevious, intelligent little partners in crime.

Luz (which literally means "light", and is pronounced "luce"), is eight, and is often called Luzita ("lucita"), which simply means, "little Luz."

Xochilt (age seven) probably has the coolest name ever (sorry, Steve), which is pronounced "SO-cheal".

The first thing I wanted to do when I got here was curl up on a couch with these little cuties and read a storybook with them... which led me to the immediate realization that there are no couches here at Hogar Amiguitos. I know that couches are simply not a Nicaraguan custom, but to me it seems so wrong for 19 kids to have no place to be cuddled and read to, to sit comfortably, and that they watch their movies every Friday night seated on those white plastic garden chairs that are a low-budget standard in every Canadian backyard or porch. For some reason, my paradigm for loving parenting and a welcoming home is inextricably linked to owning a soft, inviting, and comfortable couch couch. Anyone else feel that way?

Have you ever seen those fiesty, tough, cute kids? I mean, not the shy ones, who are sweet in their own way, but those sweet little faces that just break your heart with the firmness of their jaw and the adorable inadequacy in their tightly clenched fist? That's Luz and Xochilt.

I admire and respect Luz and Xochilt. In school, they work hard, and at home, they play hard and laugh hard. They've each been through their own hard histories, but there is a light and a strength in their eyes that deserves major kudos.

Because to me, far more important than what life gives you is what you choose to do with the life you've been given.


* "ito/ita" is a part added into many nouns in the spanish as a term of endearment or affection... it turns a word like amigo (friend) into amiguito (little friend); chela (blondie) into chelita (little blondie), gringa (white girl) into gringita (little white girl). The affectionate nickname recently given to me by Xochilt is gringita bonita, or pretty little white girl. Most of the time I hate being called gringita down here (for example, by forty-year-old men in the streets), but when it's coming from Xochilt, I suddenly find I like the sound of that.

It seems that several people have had a hard time discovering how to leave comments on my blog, so I plan on including this quick tutorial in my posts over the next few weeks.

There are two ways to get to the comments page for my blog:

1) When you arrive at my mainpage, my most recent blog entry displays on the frontpage. At the top, from left to right, you will see the title, then the date, and then a small number (usually reading either 0, 1, or 2.) This is the number of comments that have been left for that particular entry so far. The number will turn yellow when you hover over it, revealing that it is a link. If you click the link, it will reload that entry with the comments page. At this point you can leave your own comment on the entry as well as read the comments that others have left.

2) By clicking on the "pull" string from any page on my blog, you will access a drop-down menu that will provide you with links to previous and archived entries. If you are wanting to comment on the current entry, one click on the title will load that entry again with the comments page. This method is handy if you are wishing to comment on back-entries as well. Please note, however, that each entry's drop-down menu will only display the entries previous to it. To access the most recent entries again, you may need to return to my mainpage by re-entering the full domain address.