Harmony amongst kids

Normally in the States, I wouldn’t be spending so much time around kids and even if I was I would let them do their kid thing and the interaction would be sparse. I never found myself doing much babysitting or being a camp leader or anything involved immediately with children. I feel like I can take home with me a new openness to youth and see their wondering eyes at me as eyes full of curiosity. I feel as though the positive social exchanges with youth in Limay helped me find a security about myself among children and helped me see more the way they see, eyes full of newness and curiosity ready to know more, do more, see more.

I am currently going through my photos of the different stages of the mural. I think about the children of Limay and their excitement to help paint. I especially can still feel their insurmountable, high levels of energy – positive energy – the energy of youth. Closing my eyes I can almost feel the chaos of children whizzing around me while I tried to focus on painting certain detailed areas. I’m remembering their eager attendance at the Preschool in hopes of being handed a paintbrush loaded with some vibrant color. For me, the opportunity to paint the mural was an opportunity of interaction more than anything. Getting to know the kids at the youth art workshops every morning in addition to working with kids on the mural made me open up a part of myself to the rest of the community. I came to see the rest of the community as an extension of those kids’ families. It softened my heart.

This photo is of two girls that came up to me in the park while I was working on some independent work in Limay. They were timid. They stood around me acting almost embarrassed but completely curious about what I was doing and who I was. I openly conversed with them and they began asking me about where I was from and why I was American but looked Asian. I explained to them my adoption story – as much as I could of it in Spanish – and they understood and nodded their head. It was the first time I had taken a moment to face a local people and tell them about my origin and heritage and verbally share a piece of my dual identity instead of letting them assume the things they may assume about a “chinita.” Even though I cannot be sure they understood fully what I was saying, I felt like judgment of all sorts  fell away at that point in time for both of us.

Even at my host family's house, there was a little girl (my host sister's daughter) about the age of 3 named what sounded to me like Luz Elena. She was standoffish the first week of my stay with her family. But slowly she began to be the one to bring me things like juice or what have you from the kitchen while I would sit outside on the porch with the rest of her family and talk. She would be sitting on the porch with us under the stars and pat my knee, or sometimes just look at me for long periods of time while she perched on her mother's lap and the rest of us yacked. On our last day in Limay, during our goodbye ceremony with the host families, she came up to me and kissed me on the cheek. And when we were loading up on the bus and I had found my seat on the bus I watched her wave and wave and wave to me. It was silent communication but a form of love, the same kind of love I found among the other children.