Casita De Belen

This past friday my Reading and Writing 3 students and I took a 2nd trip to an orphanage called Casita De Belen to do some fun English activities with the children there. To see some photos of our experience, click on this link (or cut and paste into address window):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=66039&id=587007983&l=f8b79

They say, "You are What you Eat."

Here is the first video (there are 4 more) in a series that talk about "supermarket secrets" - that is, what really goes on with the food before it gets sold to us at the grocery store. Since our chapter this week is all about food, I thought seeing and reading about a few different food related topics might be interesting.


If you want to see the rest of the video, go to youtube to watch the other 4 sections.

And, here is another video that talks about the cruelty that animals suffer on the farms where they are raised for food. I found this video on a website called chooseveg.com, which of course promotes a vegetarian diet, so please be warned the images are a little more shocking.



Here is a short video from the movie "Fast Food Nation," where we see what happens to McDonalds food when it is left to decompose on it's own... Can you believe we eat this stuff?



Lastly: Average weekly food consumption of families around the world

Please check out one of the two following links. They show photographs of families from different countries around the world, and in the photo with them is what they purchase in one week for groceries. The location and the price of the food is mentioned as well. I am interested in hearing from you, which countries surprised you the most, and what sort of conclusions you can draw from these photos.

http://newsociety.com/blogs/index.php/2008/04/10/hungry_planet_food_expenditures_from_aro

http://blog.halbergphotographers.com/2007/12/11/average-weekly-food-consumption-of-families-around-the-world/

A Very Amazing Experience

Last Friday I had a really amazing experience when I went to an orphanage in the north east of the city with my English class. It’s a big house called “La Casita de Belén” which also works as a school for the poor children. It looked very well, with all the necessary items for educating the children and for the ones who live there.

When we arrived, there were plenty of children playing around the yard. It was surprising for me that all of them seemed to be very glad and curious about us. After that, we visited the room where the little babies slept. Some of them were walking slowly around the room, others were sleeping and a few of them were crying, so we decided to stay with them for a while. What really made me feel sad was that they were so thirsty for hugs and love; there was a sort of sadness inside their eyes and it was difficult to bear.

Then we all left that room and went into a classroom to make some fun activities in order to help the children to learn more English. They were so happy and curious, and some of them didn’t stop asking questions.

When we finished, we went to meet the director. She was very happy about our visit too. She seem to be a very kind and humanitarian person, and I could see how important all those kids are for her. Finally we left.

What I could learn about this experience was that I can share much more of myself with other people. Most of us are often so selfish and we think that we are the center of the world. We should realize that this kind of people don’t need too much of us, just sharing with them makes them happy. It isn’t a matter of money; it’s a matter of love.