It's summer

It just doesn't feel like it's summer until I arrive in Monte Plata.  After the school year finished, I spent some time on the beach relaxing and recuperating from my first full year of teaching.  I arrived with the intern that is with me for the summer last Saturday, so I have now been here for a week.  Since the school year lasted so long and I have to be back so early in August, my time in Monte Plata is about half of the time that I normally spend here, so I am actually only here for just under two more weeks.  We spend our weekdays out at the orphanage Casa Monte Plata working with the four youngest boys with reading and math.  It's always a day filled with unexpected events.  Some days the boys are eager to do work and other days they would rather just draw pictures of butterflies (I'm pretty sure they just recently learned how to draw them, so they're really into it). 
With the program that we are working on, we are seeing the boys progressing every day. They are all at different stages but they can see themselves improving every day, and they seem to be gaining confidence with each challenge that they get through.  After we complete the reading and math portion, we take time to do a devotional.  It always begins with song time with includes each of the kids receiving a percussion instrument.  I find myself back in my mother's music classroom only instead of being a student, I am her.  They love the tambourines most of all and when we sing the song about the story of Jonah about midway through none of them are sitting in their seats any more because they are so into the song (I don't know what the words are but they sing plenty loud enough to not notice). 
After we finish our time of learning, we have play time.  Usually play time is hide and seek or tag or any game that makes Bethany have to run really hard.  It has been raining pretty much every day so everything is wet which just makes the games even more fun for the boys as they get a kick out of watching me try to turn a corner and have my feet go out from under me.  My shoes have not entered the house for the last week just because of how dirty they are.  We eventually have to stop the games to eat lunch consisting of rice, beans, and something else (chicken, eggplant, fish, okra, etc.).  We have just recently had the routine of reading books after lunch.  Sometimes the kids read them, but most of the time its us reading the books (they especially love the Dr. Seuss books, which are only Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat).  One of the boys absolutely loves The Cat in the Hat and when I finish reading it to him he will ask me to read it again. 
We only have one more week of working with the kids, which seems like not very much time, but I'm sure we will enjoy every minute of it.  After next week, we will be heading out to camp for the remainder of my time here, which is the girls camp.  I'm not going to be here for the whole camp so I'm not exactly sure what I will be doing, but I've already had a couple kids asking me if I'm going to be at camp this year.  Its been a couple years since I've been at camp, but I'm definitely excited to be going back.