Today is Wednesday which means the first week was almost halfway over. I just want to keep reminding you that we got less than two weeks with the kids, because it's much more impressive to know that they did this in literally seven days. Wednesday was the day that Sarah and I were teaching about storytelling. We drew them a story arc and taught them the key elements of storytelling. I was able to show them five minute clips which demonstrated the character, the problem, and the solution. They were able to identity each part of the story and I think that impressed the five of us.
I mentioned yesterday that the "california" boys wouldn't be here for the second day. However, we got 10 new kids today. We were only supposed to have 25 at the most. We're all wondering what's going to happen tomorrow when the "california" boys are back and the rest of these kids come back as well. We'll have 32 kids then! We just decided to see who comes on Thursday, and those people who don't would just miss too much information to be allowed back.
Before we let them break for lunch, we wanted them to start writing a story. So we brought out these amazing dice which had characters and actions on it. They split into teams and then each team had to roll the dice and create a story using each one of the dies. The groups did a great job working together and actually writing out the stories.
After lunch we broke them into groups again and passed out "Kristina's cards." These were pictures I had drawn and colored that they were then to take and draw out a story. Oscar went around and sort of split their papers into 6 sections to start out storyboarding. The teams did amazing with this task and we were able to see some really great artists and watch their personalities slowly come out. Each day we meet with this kids feels like an incredible accomplishment. They are slowly coming out of their shells, especially the girls.
After we finished with the kids for the day, a huge crowd of girls gathered around me and were spouting off spanish to me, for which I awkwardly smiled and said politely, WAT?
Oscar told me they wanted me to ride with them in the truck back to where they live. I agreed and hopped in the truck. I asked Oscar to go with me so I wouldn't be alone and I might understand what the girls were all trying to say to me. They are the cutest things. I sat with my legs hanging over the back of the truck as everyone started pointing around the area and saying what things were in spanish. The scenery around us was stunning. Cerecaly is a place where it's flat but 360 degrees around you, you can see the mountains in the distance. Today there were blue skies, the grass all around us was green, and there were dozens of farm animals out grazing. Because of all the rain, parts were flooded and it definitely made the ride interesting, if not bumpy. My camera could not do the beauty justice.
Oscar and I got back and we had lunch and all of us got right into reports and planning. We're all pretty exhausted by night and we all sort of fancied a lazy night to just relax and watch a movie. It took about three hours though to set up one of our movies on our computer, to hook it up to the tv, and after ALL the trouble that it took we ended up watching a chick flick that basically no one liked (all while i convinced everyone it was a pretty good movie). Oscar said he liked it though.. kidding.
Also, meet Jerry's daughter, Allondra. She's the sweetest little thing.
