Una semana muy emocionante!

As you can see from the title of this blog, it has been a VERY exciting week for us. The children that we work with both at Oscar Scarpetta and Chiquitnes are getting stronger every day and the mothers at the birth home are more enthusiastic about performing exercises and receiving massages every week. It's only fitting that we share some of our exciting moments of this past week with you all.

So, last week Anita told you about one of the little guys at Oscar Scarpetta who was sooooo close to taking his first indpendent steps. Well, can you guess what happened this week??? Not only did he take his first indpendent steps, he was able to stand up on his own without using an object or another person to pull himself up!!!!! Exciting Event Numero Uno!!!! Now this little guy walks every where, it's absolutely great! So i'm sure by now you're wondering "What else, what else?" Let's see, something exciting occured with one of the gemellos ( twins) this week as well. During the weeks that we have been at Oscar Scarpetta, we have been working with two twins ( soo adorable ). These twins are able to sit up and transition from supine to prone ( on their back to their stomach) independently. They are also able to crawl on their bellies independently; however, at their age they should be able to perform reciprocal crawling in quadruped ( on hands and knees) and pull to stand independently. When we first began working with them, they would belly crawl using both arms and one leg, while the other leg was kept straight. We would give them constant tactile feedback to bend both knees while belly crawling, in addition we worked on tall kneeling ( kneeling on both knees), strengthening their hip and back extensors and standing. This week, one gemello began to crawl in a full quadruped position!!!! Exciting Event Numero Dos!

Exciting Event Numero Uno!

Exciting Event Numero Dos!

This past week, we made a booklet containing developmental exercises for the caretakers and the volunteer nurse to use with the babies at Chiquitines. The nurse, caretakers and director at Chiquitnes, were extremely pleased with what we made for them. The nurse in particular is considering working our plan of care into her stimulation program. We were also able to meet several new additions to the "Chiquitnes Babies", 3 of which were the babies of women who we worked with at the birth mothers house, and I must say they are MUY PRECIOSO!!!. In addition to all that has happened this week, one of the babies who we worked with was presented to the family that HE ADOPTED on Monday! It is so great to see that he has chosen a wonderful family, but we are going to miss working with him.

This past weekend we visited Parque Nacional del Cafe and learned about Colombia Coffee. We even became the new Juan Valdez. This parque was an amazing experience, just ask the HUGE hairy spider that Anita came in contact with :). And who knew that so much bambo grew here in Colombia because we sure didn't until we went to Bambusario ( Bambo area), now we notice them every where.

Look at all of that Bamboo!

Meet Anita's New Best Friend

MMMMMMMMMMMM!!! Colombian Coffee

Somos amantes de nuestra experiencia aquí en Colombia, pero estamos muy triste que el final está cerca (We are loving our experience here in Colombia, but we are very sad that the end is near). Until then, we are attempting to do as much as we possibly can!

Estamos aprendiendo mucho

We are now halfway through our stay here. Time has flown by and it's a little sad to think that we're already halfway done. It also means we only have 4 more weeks to work with the kids here and we want to do as much as possible.

The kids at Oscar Scarpetta are doing great. One little guy is SO close to taking his first independent steps and is now able to stand independently for a bit before he gets nervous and sits back down. He is walking longer distances with a light hand-hold and also attempts to transition from sitting on the floor to standing. The two younger babies that we're working with have made more improvements with their sitting balance and one is getting a lot better at maintaining quadruped (on hands and knees) and rocking back and forth. Hopefully he will be crawling (technically creeping) soon! One of the babies used to rock back and forth a lot and bang his head repeatedly against the crib or wall; he would also keep his right hand in a fist with his thumb tucked under his index finger. It seems the head banging has improved a little and we did not notice it as much yesterday. He is also making more eye contact and opening up his hands more.

One of the "medianos" we are working with improved with his motor planning and is getting better at completing exercises properly and his jumping skills are a lot better than before. The other kids we are working with mostly require general strengthening and conditioning. We have fun with races, crab walking, leap frog and various other exercises.

At Chiquitines, we continued to work with the little ones. We have been talking with a volunteer nurse there who has developed a stimulation program for the babies. We are going to share ideas and learn from each other. Since this was only our second visit, there is nothing major to report here. Although, we just found out one of the little guys we have been working with is getting adopted!!! He is adorable and we are so happy for him and his new family :)

This week we introduced TheraBand strengthening exercises to the pregnant women. They really seemed to like it, although it was a little more challenging for them. Today we provided shoulder, upper back and lower back massages to help them end their week. Next week, a volunteer is coming to observe our exercise class on Thursday so she can help lead some classes after we leave. We also learned that one of the mothers was having contractions today and she is going to have or has had her baby!

Overall, it has been a great fourth week. As for our own personal adventures, we have gotten to visit El Cristo Rey which overlooks Cali, had lunch at a great restaurant in the Andes, started "training" for our half marathon, and went out salsa dancing for the second time. :)

Pictures from some of our adventures and with some of the kids...

Cristo Rey

Gorgeous rainbow overlooking Cali

Us with Carlos Andres Gomez, an amazing artist who carves art into the clay on the side of the road

Great restaurant in the Andes mountains

The Andes

Adorable girl at Chiquitines...working on core strengthening

Facilitating muscle activation in her legs to prevent atrophy

Working with some girls with facial palsy...Blowing bubbles to help stimulate the mouth muscles

Big smile!!

Una semana chevere

We have finished another week here in Cali. This past week was a short week because Monday was a holiday. We now have a new schedule. We work with the kids at Oscar Scarpetta on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday mornings, and Friday mornings. On Wednesday, we work with the kids at Chiquitines and on Thursday and Friday afternoons we work with pregnant women.

The kids at Oscar Scarpetta continue to make progress and we are almost done with the printouts we want to provide for the care takers. We have begun working more with a couple young girls who have facial palsies and they really enjoy practicing the exercises with us because they involve bubbles! The older kids have been amazing Spanish teachers for us and we learn more and more everyday and we continue to teach them English as well.

At Chiquitines we are working with 7 babies and one 8 year old girl with spina bifida. Most of the babies have developmental delays and we work on positioning and strengthening with them. The little girl with spina bifida is so much fun to work with. We are helping her learn how to recruit the muscles in her legs to help prevent atrophy and also working on general core strengthening. She really enjoys the exercises and asked us for more!

There are currently 9 women at the home for pregnant women. On Thursday we had an exercise class with them and they really enjoyed it and wanted more exercises. None of them have exercised in the past, so we did not want to overwork them on the first day but promised we would provide more in the weeks to come. We were also able to get some Theraband for them to use for strengthening and will begin with those next week. Yesterday we returned to their home to provide low back and foot massages to each of them. They really enjoyed those. So each week we will have one day of exercises and one day of pampering.

Other than volunteering, we have been keeping busy with many activities. Last Friday we went and saw Delirio, an amazing salsa show. Then on Saturday we went out salsa dancing for the first time! It was really fun but exhausting. We also took a trip to the Rio Pance (a nearby river) which was beautiful and very refreshing. On Wednesday and Thursday we experienced a bus strike, which made getting places a little more difficult. The drivers of the smaller buses decided to strike because the Mio is going to be allowed to have routes on the smaller roads now. And now we need to start running because we decided to attempt the Cali 1/2 Marathon on July 4th. We're crazy, but trying to take advantage of as much as possible while we're down here!

La Segunda Semana

We have now completed our second week here in Cali. This week, we have continued to work with the many kiddos at Oscar Scarpetta. Last week we mentioned that it was difficult for us to work with some of the other children because we would always get rushed by the older ones. We decided to set up a schedule, where every day that we are at Oscar Scarpetta we sit down for one hour towards the end of the day with the older children and help them with their english as well as learn additional spanish. We have started to see some improvements with the babies here. When we first started working with Salacunas ( the babies), several of them were at the age where they should be able to turn independently from their back to their stomach and vice versa or be able to sit independently; however, they were unable to perform theses tasks. As of this past week, those babies are getting stronger and have been able to roll independently and sit for short periods of time independently ( Sooo Exciting!!!!!!!). We are currently preparing a plan of care for the caretakers at the institution, which includes the developmental stages for children and specifc exercises/activities to perform with them to ensure progression of each stage. A psychology student and Speech Language Pathologist who work at the institution and are part of the institution's library committe have been working on improving the library at the institution. On Monday they held an event at Oscar Scarpetta's library in which they asked the children what kind of things they would like to see and do in the library. Anita and I both participated in this event and were there helping children read the books written in english.

This week we had the opportunity of meeting with the director of Chiquitines (the other orphanage that we will begin working at next week). Chiquitines is a slightly smaller orhanage than El Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta. In addition to working at Chiquitines, we will be working with the birthing mothers affiliated with this orphanage. The birthing mothers are taught how to make crafts and jewelry that are sold at Chiquitines to assist with buying more supplies and helping them develop a craft while there. We look forward to beginning to work with the kiddos at Chiquitines and continuning to see improvements with those at Oscar Scarpetta.

La Primera Semana

So we made it through our first week at El Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta and boy was it a crazy one! We are getting to know most of the children at the institution and evaluated the children who were preselected to participate in physical therapy. On Thursday we had the opportunity of meeting with and talking to the board of directors of the institution. There are several children who we think may benefit the most from physical therapy. Some of the ailments that we see consist of increased genu varus ( bow leggedness) , increased genu recurvatum (hyper extension of the knees) with flaccid muscles of the legs, developmental delays and children who are deconditioned. We are currently in the process of developing a plan of care for each child so that we are able to teach the caretakers how to efficiently provide benficial care. We emailed our professor who is a pediatric expert to gain information on how to fabricate an AFO from everyday materials in case we are unable to obtain one from a local physiotherapist. We have also had the opportunity to teach some of the children palabras ( words ) in english and they teach us new words in spanish (we promise our spanish is improving). This week we have experienced taking two buses to the institution each day ( El Mio y Pance : the names of the buses), experienced our first cups of authentic Colombian Coffee and Chontaduro with salt and honey ( a Colombian aphrodisiac). We have also received our first salsa, bachata and rumba lesson from two older girls at the institution. All in all our first week has been interesting, fun, challenging........ MUY MUY BIEN!

And the craziness begins...

We have now finished two days at Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta. Yesterday we met the director, the rest of the staff, and TONS of super cute kids. It was more of an orientation/observation day for us, but boy was it busy. With our limited and rusty Spanish and their limited English, communication was a tad rough but we managed just fine thanks to the spanish-english dictionary and google translator. One of the psychologists brought us around and identified the children the institute had chosen for us to work with. As soon as we walked into each "sala" or room, we were greeted with smiles and lots of questions. The kids bombarded us left and right with questions in VERY fast Spanish.

We share an office with one psychologist and a psychology student from one of the local colleges. The kids are able to come in and out of the office freely and many stopped by to say hi and ask more questions. They loved taking pictures and asking us to speak in English. We were told that we would also be receiving salsa lessons from some of the kids! Below are some pictures from yesterday.

Today we actually began evaluating some of the kids on our list. It was a lot tougher than we imagined because all the other kids would swarm around us making it very difficult to focus on the kids we were evaluating. We are going to talk to the director about using a separate room. We were able to work with several babies and some kindergarten-aged kids today. We feel one of the kids would benefit from an AFO (ankle foot orthosis) so now we need to figure out how to fabricate one or ask a local physiotherapist for advice on the best way to go about making or buying one.

We are already exhausted from these past two days, but are looking forward to the next 7 weeks here! Our Spanish can only continue to improve! Buenas noches! Hasta luego!

Anita and Tanya arrive in Cali!

Hola! We made it to Cali, Colombia last night after a long day of traveling. Magnolia, who is an interpreter for Gladney, met us at the airport and took us back to her apartment where we will be staying for the next 8 weeks.

Today, she took us to the local shopping center across the street where she helped us purchase a cell phone. Tomorrow we meet with Julieta, the director of the Instituto de Oscar Scarpetta. This is one of the orphanages where we will be volunteering. We are really looking forward to getting to know the kids and the staff. Stay tuned for our adventures...