Our first day teaching

Today was our first day with the cutest bundles of joy I have ever met. I learned many new things whether they had to do with Spanish or how different our lives are. To start off, when I arrived to the bottle-built school, I noticed the lack of doors. All of the wonderful classrooms are open and looking out to surrounding classrooms and grass. The kids were flowing into the school and I felt the energy rise. They all looked at us and a smile went from ear to ear on every one of their faces. Their smiles rang with the memories of SStS volunteers past. This immediately made me excited because I knew that we were going to become close to them and make an impression.
The kids truly amazed me with all of the English they knew and with how little complaints they had. In our lives, we tend to complain a lot about stupid little things, but these kids have a much tougher life with zero complaints. For example, we drive to school or take the bus everyday, but these brilliant kids walk up to 25 minutes to get home. They don’t have the luxury to get a ride home from school everyday after their long, hard worked day. Another thing that I have realized that we take for granted is our education. I can’t speak for everyone, but sometimes I complain about having to wake up early and go to school. I never thought about how lucky I am to be able to go to a nice school.
These kids that we have been teaching get a limited education at the Hacienda Merida School, for they get an education up to 6th grade. As Alvaro told me, they can go onto another school, but a good amount of them don’t. I am very lucky to have high school and college be very easily accessed in my future, and I take that for granted. These kids don’t know what they will be doing later in their lives, whether it’s going through more schooling to working with their parents in rice fields, yet they still have a genuine smile on their faces.
After I have to leave this beautiful country, I know that I will be always thinking of these bright kids. I will be thinking about how not only I might have touched them, but how they changed me forever. I have already thought about how I will not be complaining about my little problems in life. It’s only the fifth day and I have already changed in so many ways. I can’t wait to see what more changes in the next 14 days.