Algo Mas!

Bible study sisters ERJ thanks you again for providing another awesome dinner!  The kids were told that they were going to spend an evening in an italian restaurant with appetizers, baked spaghetti, fresh bread, fruit salad and then a surprise for dessert.  My favorite part of the entire evening was the demonstration given for what to do with the plates of raw veggies and various dips on each table because it involved triple dipping into the sauces.  The kids got sooo excited about eating VEGETABLES and jumped right in after the prayer eating carrots, broccoli, and celery.  Apparently kids will eat any raw veggie as long as they can dip it into ranch and salsa.  
As the kids ate dinner, one of them told the american sitting next to them, "yeah this dinner and these foods, this dinner was made with love.  These are love foods."  Bible study sisters, no expense was spared on this night and the kids knew it.  That's success.... well that and kids eating raw veggies like it's candy.
The kids thought the baked spaghetti was kind of weird and just totally foreign.  I found that to be a little odd seeing as the directors requested italian food this time around.  Oh well.  They seemed to like it and a lot of the kids asked for seconds.
And these poor kids had to put up with Rosa taking a ton of pictures of them while they ate.  I told Rosa that I didn't really take any pictures last time we brought ERJ dinner because I didn't want to be the paparazzi.  Rosa took my camera and said she would get lots of pictures so i could email all the nice ladies who paid for the meal.  I dont know about your family, but in my family if you try to take certain people's photos during dinner.... you will hear a lot of yelling and protesting.  So dad, go ahead and yell your frustrations for these kids who arent allowed to yell at us during dinner.
After dinner Juan Porto, a fellow B2B staffer, got the bon fire started so we could roast smores with the kids.  He was a mexican boy scout and said the test for fire building was if you could get it started with just one match.  Yeah... Juan is really good at making fires as you can see from the photo.  It was so hot and intense that he actually had to hose it down with water and make the kids wait about 20 minutes before they were allowed to get close enough to roast marshmellows.  The kids passed the time by collecting fire flies and playing with them as if they were their pets.  Some of these kids are taking a lot of classes in english now and wanted to know what the word "smore" meant and how to translate that into spanish.  They decided that the word meant "something more" in english so they called them "algo mas." 
To the right is Ulysses displaying his "Algo Mas" technique.  The fire was so intense and hot that the kids looked as if they were participating in a tornado drill as they crouched on the ground with their faces down and their sticks pointing behind them towards the fire.

All in all, it was an awesome evening and I'm looking forward to our next trip to ERJ.