April 22

We got to go to the water park today with the Infa kids. I was actually excited to go this time because this time I wouldn’t be as sketched out to get in the water. Of course they were still filled with angry bugs that like to bite, but I figured that if I‘ve been in the river, this could not be any worse. The bus arrived at the Hogar to pick me up and we all headed for the water park singing songs at the top of our lungs. When we got there, I was supposed to supervise the deep pool (deep as in up to my shoulders). I hoped to get rid of my sandal tan, but I’m convinced that it’s more permanent than fixable.

After lunch, I switched to watch the younger kids in the shallow pool. It was exhausting. Kids would continually call my name and demand my attention so that I could watch them go down the slide or dunk their head in the water. Some of the adults would make fun of me and call my name too. There was no break time… I looked from one kid sliding forwards to another kid on the other slide sliding back words. I looked from one kid jumping in the pool to another one doing jumps from the slide (I scolded those ones). It was chaos, but I tried to remember how I felt when I was a kid and when I wanted someone to watch me dunk my head in the water or jump in the pool. “Look what I can do!” were the words that my parents would constantly hear. Then they would pretend like I just did something spectacular that no one else in the world has ever done and tell me how special I was. That’s when I’d feel like a rock star and call them again and again leaving my parents exhausted from watching me repeat my cannonball or head dunk a million times over. We don’t realize the many little things that parents put up with until we have to do the same thing. Props to those parents around the world that make their children feel like their cannonball is even cooler than the one they did 5 seconds earlier.