Botanical Gardens

Yesterday for our weekly get together with girls from the neighborhood where I volunteer, we took a field trip to the botanical gardens. I had just been to the gardens the week before with Molly, but they were really pretty and I was looking forward to going back again. The Dutch woman who I do the workshop with suggested we give the girls a list of names of plants, flowers, etc and then photos to go along with them and they have to figure out which names match the photos and then go out and find these things in the botanical gardens. She were running a little late so by the time we left it was drizzling outside. The 10 minute walk from the office was challenging to say the least. Having to worry about myself crossing the crazy busy streets of Medellin I worry enough, let alone with 11 highly active, giggly girls between the ages of 9 and 12 without a care in the world. That on top of the distractions I had from 2 girls who kept bombarding me with questions about the U.S., asking me to speak English, why I had my nose pierced, why I had a toe ring, and "Americans really do like to wear sandals don't they?" I patiently responded to their questions while keeping tabs on the cars and corralling the girls to keep them from gallivanting across the street head on into a bus, counting uno, dos, tres...11 girls every time we crossed a street. The Dutch woman was with me, but she had her hands full too at the front of the group.

When we got to the gardens the mayhem wasn't over. The girls immediately began to run around looking at the different flowers, trying to find the turtles in the lake, and complaining that they wated to go to the maze (there's a smattering of 5 foot tall bushes that form an intricate maze where the girls would run around and get so lost while screaming their heads off). Because the girls didn't really get a chance to look at the photos before we left, they had no idea what they were looking at or what the names on their lists meant. They kept calling me "profe" (teacher) and asking me to help them. Sorry kids but I barely know the names of flowers and plants in English, let alone in Spanish! Later, more excitement ensued when the girls discovered a turtle, which was actually a rock in the pond, and then when a girl got pricked by a cactus in the cactus farm area. That was when we decided to take a snack break and let the girls scream their heads off in the maze.

The way back to the office was equally exciting, dodging cars and buses, now during rush hour. After their parents came to pick them up or they walked back themselves (9 year olds walking home alone, even just a few blocks, just seems proposterous in the U.S. doesn't it?), I had to walk the half hour back to my apartment. When I got back I was exhausted and starving, but happy. For one thing, on the way home I had been asked by a Colombian for directions (unfortunately I didn't know where the Prado Clinic was, but I acted like a true Colombian and explained to them the vague idea I had of where I thought it was, so as not to just flat out say "no se"), and second I had a great time with the girls. I was glad to see they were easily entertained by the gorgeous flowers and big trees and maze-like bushes. When one of the girls was a bit down and then started crying, a few of the girls tried to comfort her. They told me she was upset because she didn't know how to read and couldn't do the activity with the list of flowers so the other girls took her list and filled in the numbers for her. I thought that was really sweet. This 11 year-old girl is a bit overweight, doesn't go to school with any of the girls, and seemed a bit of an outsider at the beginning, but the girls made sure she felt included after that.