best experience ever

i took so many things out of my life in mexico and the work with the children. i can see so many things different now and it definitely broadened my mind.  i found new friends and they already came to berlin. i can highly recommend going abroad and doing some social work. i know we are studying now and it’s not the best time to do it  but maybe you have sisters/brothers or friends who just finished school and are thinking of going away for a year. and even for us during the semester break would be time to do some social work – and don´t forget that it’s also good to improve language skills : )

here some information:

unicef

praktikaworld

germans abroad

icja

that were the experience i have made. i hope i was able to pass them on to you.

lets see what will happen this summer.

the summer when i go back to mexico

this doesn´t need many words

i will go back to mexico. during my summer vacations i can work again in the fundación barocca!! i will see the children again. i will see what happened to them. it is unbelieveable and i cannot wait to be there again!!!!

this doesn´t need many words. : )

2nd home

i told you so much about my work with the children sometimes rather sad than happy things. today i feel like writing about something more positive.

travelling- another beautiful unforgettable experience!!

swimming with turtles, seeing whales, climbing on volcanos, amazing waterfalls, maya ruins, surfing, exciting cities, bungee jumping on the beach of acapulco and much more. there were places were you could just relax. in a small town called mazunte was even no cash machine and we slept on hammocks. in my favorite town puerto escondido i met some australians and with a hired van we drove all the way to the caribbean. as i write about this i so wanna be there right now especially with all the exam stress : )

it was interesting for me that most of the mexicans haven´t seen anything of their country yet. they went to the close areas around their hometown but never further away. i guess this isn´t true for all of the mexicans but the poorer people i met were always so interested in hearing where i went to and what i have seen. i sometimes stayed at the houses of mexican families and i have never experienced such a hospitality and frankness.

as i told you so many sad things about the treatment of the children i just wanted to state out that the mexicans i have met on my way were so friendly and i will never miss one single second with all of the people who came into my life. they always gave me the feeling that i belong to them. my second home is mexico.

what an adventure!!

remember when you were young. i bet you sometimes did something special and exciting with your parents. like visiting a zoo or a kirmes. i grew up in a small town and there we had a tiny zoo. every time i went there i was so excited to see all the animals. or the kirmes once a year in the next town with all the carousels. how much fun that was…

I´m telling you this because the children from the fundación barocca never saw something like that. one day i came to work and they told me that there is a fería in san luís potosí, it´s like kirmes but really huge!! everything was planned and we went there with all the children. 50 children and they had never seen something like that.

as we arrived there we directly walked to the animal area. most of them saw for the first time  horses, zebras, lions, … and water animals like seals and dolphins as well. there was even a dolphin show. it was so amazing how they screamed and how happy they were.  a few of the children were even allowed to go to the trainer and to touch the dolphins. it was such a small thing but it opened really everyone´s heart. it is so hard to put this feeling in words. you could just see pure happiness in the children´s eyes. afterwards we got some free tickets for the carousels. that was the first day that i saw all of them smiling and it was definitely one of the greatest days as far as i remember.

and again: something more or less normal for us can be so special for someone else in the world.

that day i promised myself to esteem the small things more in life.

fería in san luís potosí:

hablas español??

todays topic: communication problems!!

expectations for mexico? finding a job, traveling around, and learning spanish will come casually. after 3 years spanish in school i thought it won´t need a long time. well i didn´t consider the fact that while traveling most of the people speak english. so during the first weeks there was not that much spanish involved. but i still believed that it will be easy -then i started working. the first day came and everybody was excited. all the children had so many questions they wanted to know everything about me. millions and millions of questions. i think i understood 2 of them. the very first things you learn by the way in school.

1.”comó te llamas?” (what´s your name)

2.”cuántos años tienes?” (how old are you?)

never the less it was interesting and a lot of fun. communication with hands and feet.

the real problem came up when i was alone with my children. explaining children that something is wrong or right with nearly no spanish was more difficult as i thought it will be. during the first weeks it was funny for all of them to listen to my “school spanish”. the older children always said that i speak so elaborate. a frequent question was: “why are you speaking that strange?”:) but they were always really curious and ask me to translate spanish words into german and english. after one week they knew a lot of german words and it was so lovely how they pronounced them. what was really frustrating me was when one of the children started to cry and i couldn´t understand what was wrong. a child speaking spanish and at the same time crying is so hard to understand. i could just cuddle them and say that everything will be ok. therefore learing spanish became first priority. it is such an advantage speaking more languages but even though if you don´t understand each other through words there is always a way to talk to each other. that´s simply amazing.

“there are hundreds of languages in the world but a smile speaks them all.”

check this out!

as i wrote in an earlier post about a child from mexico city living on the street taking drugs and trying to survive i want to recommend a really interesting movie to you.

it is a documentary about four children trying to survive on the streets in mexico city.

it fits perfectly to what i tried to describe so don´t miss to watch the documentary:  mama calle

here you can see  mama calle on you tube just to get some impressions what it is about and here a website where you can find many of these movies.

have a nice week everyone : )

kids eating : )

strange enough that there is something to tell about the food at my working place. but i think it is really interesting to see what the children had to eat and how it worked.

first of all it´s not that easy. there were more than 50 children, not a lot of money and just one “cook”.

sometimes a bakery brought some old bread which was really adamant. the children where always so happy when that happened. here in germany we wouldn´t eat that anymore and it seemed that they never ate something good like that…

for lunch it was always the same. noodles in soup, noodles without soup, rice in soup, rice without soup, sometimes beans. they never ate meat. that was simply to expensive.

normally the schoolkids started eating and afterwards the small kids were allowed to eat. it was always such a scramble. every child wanted to have more food than the other. there were no rules for them. if the spoon fell on the floor they ate with their hands. the dining room looked always like a mess. everywhere was food on the floor sometimes the children even threw it around.

it was not the children´s fault they never had rules and they simply didn´t know it better. explaining them how to eat and that food is really valuable was difficult.

seems as it was yesterday that i was there.