Second Blog

     After only the third day here, I feel like I've learned and changed a lot. Yesterday, I got a small taste of teaching when helping in the preschool class. I was pretty nervous at the start, but once I started to get involved and I interacted with the students it was much better. There was one child in the class that I really connected with named Erik. He was the skinniest kid I've ever seen but also one of the smartest 4 year olds I have met. He was quiet, but very happy and his attitude made me feel very good. By the end of the day, I was exhausted but fulfilled.
    Today was a very special day for me. For about the whole morning, Fiona, a fellow student named Jenna, and I went of home visits with a physical therapist and a translator. We visited infants and toddlers who lived in the most rural places to some who lived right in the middle of the city. While we were on the visits, we would ask questions such as the diet of the child and if the child took any medications. Some of the answers we got made me sad. A lot of the fathers had abandoned the family either because he did not want a family or he was scared by the disability. Many of the families could only travel so often to places such as Managua to get medical care for the child. The third visit had the biggest impact on me. We went to visit a 2 year old named Juan Fransisco. He had a rare unknown disability in his circulatory system that made it very hard to get air to the rest of his body from his lungs, and he also had a cleft pallet. His family lived in a more rural place, and they had been without water for 20 srtaight days. When we first met him, the first thing I noticed was how purple he was. With his disability, he could only get so much oxygen. Even so, he was still smiling and playing around. I was amazed at how well he was doing, because his mother had told us that a relative was born with the same condition and hadn't even lasted 6 months. It was really sad to see Juan Fransisco in that situation but the determination of him and his family was very inspiring.
    I'm so excited for rest of the week. I'm really starting to like the students at Escuela Especial, and I can't wait to go back there.