diary entry for a day with local children

i went to Subic Pag-asa Christian church on Jan 16 2011 at 4pm ~ 6pm to spend a day with local children and some of their parents. Firstly, what we did was to introduce ourselves to the children. My tutor helped us to translate English into Tagalog because they could barely speak English. After introducing us, we were divided into 3 groups. I and Joseph (9th grader, Solina's brother) was in a same group and we had a small competition with jump ropes. Since i was not a type of person who can lead young children because of my patience, i had some hard time helping them to learn how to do Jump ropes but we still did a great job! after that, we had a jump rope which about 5 people are involved. Among those, 2 were holding the rope and 3 were jumping. This actually helped us and the local children to get closer and this was one of the moment where we laughed a lot. The other thing we did together was Limbo. girls did this first, but we were very impressed due to the fact that both of girls and boys were very flexible. They really did a great job on this activity! After this, we had some time to play a music. We actually were planning to teach them some songs but the environment could not support us that i played a piano. I first was pretty shy and did not know what to play but i chose to play the CCM called "still" because this is one of my favorite CCM! When i was playing it alone, my brother held the mic and stared to sing along with my music and we successfully ended it. Well, since this was also well-known CCM in English, the pastor of this church and his wife also sang this song in English and i played piano for them too. I especially was very impressed with this part because it felt that we actually had some connections and common facts that can bring us into one. Than we gave presents to children and i was very glad to see everyone playing with the toy we gave! We also took some pictures together and at the very end, one boy came up to me, said "thank you" and gave me a five. This really touched me because i felt that this small thing, or an activity can really help these children to laugh and enjoy their time. This might become the end of our activity but if i have a chance, i really would love to come to this place again and have some more interactions with these children.