More about L.I.F.E.

First of all, LIFE stands for "Luchemos para una Infancia Feliz y con Esperanza," which means "fighting for a happy and hopeful childhood." Friday and Saturday were my 2nd and 3rd days. Next week, I am signed up for 4 events. I have met some pretty cool people. Yesterday was the cooking thing again, and man, it is not a pretty house that we work in. First of all, bad news, the milk we brought for them went bad. I mean BAD. It was chunky. So I had to throw it away...down the toilet. The "sink" was merely a faucet (no hot water) with a giant bin underneath it, which was dumped out the door often. The good news is, the old rusty matress spring was finally moved out of the house, so I was no longer worried about the kids stumbling and getting tetanus. We made them some sort of fried sweetened bread with hot tea (since the milk was bad). It was pretty good. Cleanliness is practically impossible...no soap, no warm water. No wonder I came back with a cold, which I'm fighting with sleep, soup, and lots of orange juice. Friday was the most fun, though. We taught the kids (there were a little over 30 of them) origami and helped them with math and english lessons.
There is a trip to Misiones (north...near the Iguazu falls) on the 16th of July that I would love to go, but it costs $US 300. They go to Misiones, bring clothes, cook food, and basically do whatever they can for the villas there, which are much poorer than the villas here. I can't imagine what a poorer area could possibly look like, but apparently it's possible. Anyway, this activity is way off my budget. In fact, I do not have any money of my own at the moment. I'm still living off the money my parents are loaning me. I have been eating in every night, though, and I don't go out drinking on the weekends anymore except once every few weeks. All my money is now going towards LIFE. I am buying paper for next week's lessons, and transportation every time costs $AR 25 (pesos). So yes, I'm still spending money but it is no longer on myself, which actually feels good.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the villa I went to yesterday (there are a total of 6, not including Misiones). I only took 3 pictures because I didn't want the kids to notice my camera because I feel weird about carrying something so expensive around in such a poor area. It seems kind of...I don't know the word. But not nice. The picture that looks like a hospital is actually what should have been a hospital, but never was. Now people live there. If you look closely, you can see clothes hanging from inside the windows. Anyway, there's a small glimpse! More to come soon. I want to eventually take pictures of some of the children, but that's another thing I'm not sure we are allowed to do because we don't know if the parents would like people taking pictures of their children. So anyway, I'll work on that and hopefully be able to get some more pictures for you all to see.

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