clase de baile

This Wednesday I took a hip hop dance class for the girls. It was awesome. I was happily surprised at the amount of girls that turned up, especially those who have never bothered to participate in our other activities before, as well as a few girls that have no patience for my basic Spanish and openly mock me (yes they do! haha). It was so inspiring to see how eager some of them were to learn. Not all of them stayed to learn the entire routine, but it meant a lot to me that 4 girls were enjoying themselves enough to stay for the whole class. One of those girls who did stay until the end had told me earlier on our way over to the dance room that she was only going to watch and she had sat out at the beginning of the class, so it made me really happy that she ended up participating and really enjoying herself. Yay for dance being a universal language!
It's been frustrating for me since I have been here wanting to get to know people but being limited by my Spanish. It's crazy how much you take it for granted, the ability to be able to effortlessly communicate with people in day to day life in your native language. Earlier in the week I sat and chatted with "L" for awhile. It took some miming, a pen & paper to write some key words down, my Spanish dictionary and Lily translating on the odd occasion to make our conversation. All definitely worth it just to get to know this girl a little better. We chatted about what she wants to do when she finishes school, a little bit about her living situation, music, boys... I found out she loves the Twilight movies but hasn't read the books so I'm bringing her the first in the series for her to read next week.
So I can do it! I can connect with them, it just requires a little more effort and time. Every day I am getting to know the girls better and I think they are beginning to trust and like us 3 volunteers more and more as time passes.

*Just for future reference you should know that due to the girls at Aldea already having their rights  severely violated I'm not allowed to use girls names or post pictures of them in this blog. (The pictures I posted from Liga were girls from other institutions.)