Maestro!

During the mornings this week I've been going to the Casa de Hogar, a home for abandoned boys a few blocks from here. There are 11 boys living there right now, most between 10-14 years old, except for Luis who is 20, and Jesús who is 18. Jesús isn't there every day but the rest live there full time. Luis and Jesús are really the only male role models the younger boys have, so they are glad to have me around. All the staff are women. While I've been there we've played soccer, jammed on bongos/guitars, and worked a lot on schoolwork. Only a few of the boys actually attend school, I'm not sure yet why all of them don't. They go in the afternoons. In the mornings, all of the boys have the chance to work on some schoolwork if they want to. Not all of them choose to. A teacher comes once a week, today was the day, but the rest of the days it's just Luis helping them with what he can. I've been helping one boy named Jhon with his multiplication tables. Today we moved from 3's to 4's (x 0-10). Another boy named Elio was tasked to write the even numbers from 0-1000. He understands the 0,2,4,6,8 concept of it, but every time he got to a number ending in 8 he had to ask me what the next one was. Try as I did I couldn't get him to see the pattern in it. Which was frustrating. The disparity between each boys level of education is big. Since most of them have spent a fair amount of time living on the street, they haven't gotten much for education. Jhon, who I've been working on basic multiplation with, is 12. Elio, 11. It's been hard but fun, the boys are good kids and eager to learn. I got called maestro a few times from across the room when someone needed help, "Maestro! Ayudame!" Seeing them improve at their math skills or spell a word right that I corrected them on earlier is really satisfying. Jhon's smiling face after finally remembering what 6x3 is after multiple times getting stuck on it is something I'll remember for a long time.

Jhon--Yes that is a CDH soccer jersey

Elio writing out the evens from 0-1000