Trial Run #1

Today’s house call what at the Juarez family’s house. I actually got to see just how the poor the neighborhood is by seeing where most of the families and children I work with live. Not only did I see what little they have to work with, I found out that Maribel and Elizabeth, two young twins aren’t the only children of Doña Juarez—oh no—she has at least 3 or 4 more older children. There are a lot of people to fit into a small house. However, it proved extremely advantageous to have older kids because it expanded our repertoire of drawings beyond that of houses, trees, and flowers. At one point, I said people were NOT ALLOWED to draw houses or trees. Maribel ended up drawing a camping site, and Mari Elena drew a boat in the ocean. At least they were semi-thinking out-of-the-box.

So far, we have thirty tiles (this includes the ones the moms did) painted and about 120 to go. But I do know of quite a few more kids that I haven’t met with to paint, and three mothers have already offered their houses and/or kids to help paint! And each day I’m carrying a handful of tiles in my mochila to keep the classroom stocked with blank ones.

Also, the kids were very patient with the rule that they had to draw their ideas on paper before painting a tile. I was actually pretty critical, and often offered suggestions about details or add-ons before giving the “thumbs-up.” Elizabeth had me write out the numbers 1-10, and she wrote out the words in English and drew small pictures of the appropriate number. I’ve also made sure that they sign their tiles, so once they are up on the wall, people will know who designed them.