Beginning my peruvian adventure

In the interest of how much I want to talk about the beautiful orphan children, for now I will skip all of the events leading up to my arrival and settlement at Hogar de Esperanza. The uncomparable beauty of South American children, of course, goes without saying. Countless pairs of chcolate colored eyes captured my heart on day one. But sometimes I get the feeling that some of them know exactly how cute and pretty they are, and think they can walk all over me. Which may have been true for the first few days, but I am quickly beggining to catch on to their mischief and schemes. Never before have I seen such an fascinating cross between troublemakers and sweethearts. I pray every day that each of these precious ninos will someday have a family to love them, and the possibility of that not being in their future breaks my heart.
My first few days here at the alburgue were crazy. A newborn arrived on the same day I did, so the volunteer coodinater, Samantha, was completely swamped and unable to go over anything or help me settle in. Circumstances sort of left me floundering a little bit. But things worked out. I met the other volunteers and some of the children and almost immediately started teaching music classes. The advantage I have that most of the other teachers do not that the kids chose to take lessons. When they genuinely want to learn, it is a joy to teach.
The language barrier is a huge hindrance. I am spending as much time as I can studying espanol in order to be better able to communicate. As it is, when I attempt to speak, I am generally met with either laughter or mockery. Just the other day, I accidently told the 14 year old girls that I had 5 boyfriends waiting for me in the states! Obviously they thought this was quite amazing.
This weekend I am solely responsible for a house of a dozen boys, all but one of them 9 and under. Definitely going to be an interesting experience! Around here we all have to be extremely flexible, as well as being able to go outside our comfort levels to do what has to be done. Nothing could be more exhausting, or more rewarding. All of us our here because we believe more than anything that each child deserves love and security.

More to come about the peruvian orphans!