Dearest Friends and Family, Christmas was full of a lot of fun for the kids. Before Christmas come the posadas in Mexico, which are known by all children in this country for their seven pointed piñatas, filled with jicamas, oranges, peanuts and sweets. This year, the kids were invited by one of our Mexican sponsors to a horse ranch for a great party, pony rides and piñatas for the last Christmas posada of the year. All the kids had a fabulous time and couldn’t stop talking about the dancing horse show, and the exotic animals running around freely on the
Read the Rest…
We interviewed a bunch of the kids recently. Their answers were really adorable. Here are some highlights. Enjoy! What do you want to be when you are big? Dovin (Oscarito) – Eat cheese. Abundio – I drive machine (he means a big bulldozer). Tanisha (Lupita) – I help Elbia (our cook) and work hard to make cookies and EVERYTHING. Alexan – Be a fish, to swim in the water… and that’s it. Joli – A fish, a really big one… and I will eat the little fish! Or….a ball so I can play all the time. Stephanie – I’M ALREADY
Read the Rest…
Dear Friends and Family, Our children were so excited for Dia de Muertos/Halloween this year that they kept asking “is it today?” for about a week. Some of them had only celebrated this holiday for the first time last year and are just starting to get accustomed to the reliable flow of holidays and birthdays that never fail to be celebrated each year. Finally the day came, and the kids had a blast dressing up in their costumes before school and celebrating the whole day and into the night. In the middle of the fun, Dovin, age 6, looked over
Read the Rest…
Dear Friends and Family, The past weeks have been an exciting new beginning for the Ixaya community. One of the recent innovations we have been able to implement this year are personalized learning activities every morning in Math and Spanish, in addition to the regular curriculum. This semester a new student to student workshop was introduced, in which the older children (7th through 9th graders) gave a once a week class of their own devising to the younger students. The workshops included ballet, jewelry making, acrobatics and soccer! Other workshops this semester have included music/storytelling classes, dance classes, and permaculture
Read the Rest…
Estephany (Stephanie) is an 8 year old girl and has been with us for 2 years. She, like Isabel, may never become totally independent as she is mentally disabled. She is very affectionate, and loves to be with people. She was extremely neglected, living enclosed in a room for years. She was so caked with dirt when she was discovered that it was thought that she was deaf, but her ears where simply plugged with filth. When she came to Tashirat she almost never smiled and was extremely fearful of the smallest things. Estephany is now very outgoing, even with strangers, and is known for her funny, totally off the wall comments. Her open, loving nature has really blossomed in the last 2 years, as she changed from a very antisocial loner to a regular little girl who loves to chat and play with her girlfriends. She is always caring and affectionate with her playmates. Babies fascinate her, and her favorite toys are, of course, her dollies whom she loves to wrap them up in blankets and carry around with her. She always tries to do the same with the smaller children if she can! For the first year she was here, Estephany would hardly play with anything at all; only puzzles could attract her attention. One of the first things we had to teach her was just how to play.
Dearest Friends and Family, We have some exciting news for Tashirat and the Orphanage as well: the integration of our newest and youngest staff member, Jonathan Godoy. Jon is the son of Tashirat’s founder, and is a highly capable, impressive young man who has already brought so much to Tashirat since he entered in June. He has also become an exemplary father to three of our children, as well as taking over our accounting and the maintenance areas, and giving gym classes to the little kids (3+ years), Ixaya children, and training with the teens. One of this summer’s first
Read the Rest…
Dear Friends and Family, Our Ixaya girls had a beautiful introduction to modern dance this past spring when a professional dancer from New York City, Amanda Gavan, gave a week long course culminating in a performance for their families and the rest of the school. It was inspiring to see how much the girls enjoyed it, despite the fact this was a completely new experience for all. The school year ended last month with a graduation ceremony and potluck for all the students and their families. The soccer court was decorated especially beautifully this year by our teachers and the
Read the Rest…
Dearest Friends and Family, This year we celebrated Children’s Day, a national holiday dedicated to all primary school age children in Mexico, by taking the kids swimming at the hotel down the road from the school. Here are some pictures of the Ixaya students having fun on their day. We’ve also half way completed the cisterns, water capturing and hand washing stations at the school which is going to make it a lot more self sufficient and sanitary. Thank you Aldo, Bob & Stan and everyone at Traveling Mercies for your immense generosity in supporting us in this project!
Read the Rest…
Dear Family and Friends, It’s the height of the dry season, and things are getting pretty dusty around here. There seems to be no way of keeping the kids clean, short of keeping them indoors, which frankly, would be too cruel when there is so much nice, chocolate colored dirt around to play with! They also love grinding different rocks and bricks into “chile” powder, and playing “restaurant” with it, but after an hour of two, they are hardly recognizable! Our teen boys have been diligently building a cement paved bike track, advancing a few meters a day. It's hard
Read the Rest…
Dearest Friends and Family, Christmas has passed but we are still left with a lot of beautiful memories of the Christmas pageant which is now officially Tashirat’s end of the year highlight. This year was our 3rd annual “Pastorela”, which is performed by many of our Tashirat children and students from the Ixaya School. We uploaded many video clips from the Pastorela. They are all located at our You Tube Channel: www.youtube.com/tashiratkids One of our favorites is our angel Melina on the "telas" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lawt1JgZfss but you can find all of the videos at http://www.youtube.com/tashiratkids if you'd like to see the
Read the Rest…
