she wrote again!

My Uncle passed away last night about 50 minutes before I posted. I suppose I run late in everything I do. I'm not sure if his family is relieved or sorrowful or both. I suspect they've already gone through a lot of the grieving since this was a long slow process.

Yesterday we worked on digging out a foundation for a new home for children. Not like I'd get a new home :) But we could receive more children from Children's Services with another home. We just need houseparents for it! We have a group coming next week that has supplied money specifically for this project, and will also be supplying the labor to get it started. I think they might put an overhang on my house and fix some of the water damage we had during the winter! I'm so excited. I thought it was fun to work on the foundation, b/c people return and always tell my girls "I worked on your bedroom! I made your walls!" and now my girls will be able to tell the new children that come "I worked on your house! I made it sturdy!" They are repaying what they've been given.

Last week one of my girl's had a question in her school book. "What things contaminate the Earth?" She was all like, what? I thought maybe she didn't understand the word contaminate, so I said, poison the Earth? dirty the Earth? and she still had no idea. 15 and no idea about pollution. Some things I really take for granted, but I suppose people learn about pollution in the media (TV, News) and in school, and she had little of the first and none of the second. I got to tell her all about the ozone layer and everything else. The girls helped too!

One of the older girls hosted a sexual purity tea for the younger girls. I've had conversations with the girls about my own dating background as they were curious (as girls are!). This conversation was the result.
V: You know that man you were in love with.
Me: um, yeah. (I never had told her I was in love with anyone, just for the record.)
V: You're still in love with him.
Me: How do you know?
V: He has a piece of you, and you have a piece of him.
Me: really?
V: (Listing it off with her fingers) If you touch a boy, if you hold hands, if you kiss him, those things (*Her eyes were wide with judgement, or sensationalism, I don't know which), You get pegged together (spanglish for stuck together, peg=pegamiento=glue) and part of you sticks to him, and part of him sticks to you FOREVER!
Me: Thank you for telling me that, you're so helpful!

In Spanish, it's fairly acceptable to call someone "negrito" (little black one) cue funny story. (maybe)
One of my girls M, was hanging out with some americans visiting and volunteering and they gave her a "I <3 NY" shirt.
I asked about it and she said (in spanish though) "One of the negritos gave me this" (in the context that she didn't know his name)
She speaks pretty good English, but has never been formally taught, so I took the chance to say, "It's ok that you said "negrito" in our house, but you might not want to call him that to his face, because a lot of people in America don't talk that way"
So she said, "what do I say?"
"Americano Africano"
She replied very confused, "but he's not from Africa."
I suppose political correctness escapes us as we are a poor homogeneous group.

ok, off to deal with a couple attitude problems! :)