Our lovely Asia

For the past 6 weeks a previous volunteer has come back from Poland to visit!!

She is amazing, about 10 years older than us, loving and so giving and really cares about the girls´health and corresponding with their padrinos (translated as Godfather, madrina= Godmother, but they are really supporters of the girls). Many of them are in Poland, since our head sister is from their and their order (Sagrado Corazon, sacred heart) started in Poland. So, they sent her with money and gifts for the girls.
The girls love her.

We did quite a bit with Asia, She is crazy about 2 things, the dentist and lice.
 We helped her buy Christmas gifts with padrino money, got BOTTLES of lice shampoo from a secret laboratory she knew about and did periodic lice checks, took girls out to ice cream with padrino money as well, took girls to the pool for a treat from the hermanas, took the dogs out for walks (yes, we will continue that duty now that we know it´s not dangerous with the other dogs on the street and that our hogar dogs are not insane) and helping girls write their annual Christmas letters to their Padrinos (which we will do again for Easter). She introduced us to the Bolivian pomegranate, her fave beer, told us places we should visit before we leave, gave us some more information about the hogar and girls we didn´t know about, and showed us parts of the city we never imagined existed (and will hopefully never see again...for example, the raw meat section of the concha).
I might actually miss her and our spanish lunches (well we had to speak spanish to her...she does know some english tho). She was great to have around!

DANCE PARTY!
She left Wednesday, so Tuesday night we had a dance party. The girls arranged 4 dances for her and then afterward, we all partied out in the patio of the 2nd house. It was really fun, then she handed out gifts to each of the girls (including chocolate, earrings, new underwear, and a toothbrush) She even go the nuns and Ang and I something too. When Hermana Anna got her gift she´s like ¨yay i´m going to get new underwear and earrings!!¨she is nice but strict and not usually super animated so it was really funny. It was also funny seeing her and Hermana Guada dancing up a storm.
We got earrings, a little bolivian cell phone holder that i will use for money, and chocolate as well. Afterward, secretely guada told ang that we were not eating soup tonight, we are going out for pizza!!
Asia loves pizza, so we went to the Hermanas fave. pizza joint Sole Mio. It was pretty good, we had some white wine and a few diff. kinds of pizza. I tried anchovies for the first time, super salty not very good. We chatted about a lot of things, and Ang and I learned a lot more about the girls in the hogar...now we have a better understanding (little by little) of what reality we are living in with these girls...that will have to wait for another blog.

But it was a good night and we were left with a few tasks to do that we couldn´t finish before, like more Christmas shopping (almost done, got a bunch of stuff today and think one more day will do it), taking more girls to the dentist, taking the last group to the pool, and e'mailing her updates for each girl with a recent picture in a few months so she can send it to their padrinos. We, and the girls, hope to skype with her sometime soon. May God grant her safe travels this week!