Today was our first official day of The Chocolate Train program for the kids and just as we were ready to begin it started pouring. It stopped quickly but we all had to skip our first station, which, for my group was games. We went straight to the bakery and had a blast making cookies.
Fr. John showing the kids how the prosforo is prepared for communion
Since I’ve done this program before, I was blessed with some of the most difficult children and it took all of my energy to keep track of them. I’m thankful to have Gina as my partner and I think we make a great team. We have a total of 9 children and all but 3 are under 10 years old. The 5 and 6 year old boys are really hard to keep on task and they like to run off sometimes or get into everything except what they are supposed to be doing. We also have two sisters, Gaby and Belia who are about 4 and 5 and they are quite a handful. Gaby has a lot of sass for a 4 year old but is so fun to be around. Her sister Belia is so sweet but is hard to keep on task. If the kids weren’t so adorable we’d probably be pulling our hair out already. During our cookie making, Gina and I had to keep taking turns picking up Gaby because she is too little to reach the table top to stamp out her cookies.
Belia and her sister Gaby
The next station was swimming which was a nice break for Gina and me because 5 of our kids are too little to swim, so we put them in the game room with another group while we watched the older kids in the pool. We ended up having a mini soccer game outside of the pool with beach balls and it was so much fun, despite the stubbed toe.
Our last station was arts and crafts where we made icon Christmas ornaments. It was very chaotic and no matter how hard you try to plan out each step of a craft, they find some way to do their own steps. At one point we were finishing up the cutting out stage (aka step one) and I looked over to see Alexander, one of our mischievous boys, painting his project with his own special blend of glue, red and gold paint, and glitter. I just decided to let him do his thing.
After lunch we gave presentations about ourselves to the children. Since they all know me, I started out by introducing myself as Steven Jonas (they are crazy about the Jonas brothers) and I told them that I was 100 years old. We all have fun teasing each other and I was telling them that my last name is “Shippy” not “Chippy” as some of them so affectionately call me. So now they all joke around and call me “SHHHHippy” and they think it’s so funny. The little ones are even starting to say it which is hilarious. The teenage girls are probably the most entertaining though. They’ll shout “Shippy!” and when I look over they all start giggling or pretend like nobody said anything. Teenage girls are still teenage girls no matter where they live.
We ended our evening with one-on-one lessons from the older girls on how to make komboskinis. They are hard enough to learn in English, so to try learning in Spanish was incredibly hard. Rebecca was my teacher and it was nice getting to spend some time with her. She was dear to me long before I first came to the Hogar because one of my good friends, Luke, had fallen in love with her when she was little. I didn’t quite get the steps all nailed down but hopefully I can work on it more the rest of our time here.
