Day 7

Day 7
After meeting at Oriente, we headed out to the school where Juan volunteers once a week. It is a school for students with special needs. Many of the students have Down Syndrome, mental and/or physical limitations, or other issues. We took the kids to the park and ran a small session for them consisting mostly of calisthenics with a bit of soccer mixed in the kids, ours and theirs, responded very well to the opportunity. So much so in fact, that we decided to spend a couple of hours there tomorrow morning as well in lieu of a full day of shopping and sightseeing. It was great watching our boys interact with the kids and, in turn, watch the kids have so much fun with our boys. This, along with the work we have done to this point, has really put a lot of things in perspective for the boys. Most notably, the appreciation of the things we are blessed with (homes, families and friends that care for us, physical abilities, etc) and that with knowledge of issues come responsibility.
After visiting the school, we returned to Oriente for lunch and worked with the kids from the school ato Oriente. We hosted two sessions for them and were able to spend some time with the kids during their recess period. We then went to the home of Diego (one of the heads of IAM) and his family for dinner. He, along with Chica and Juan, expressed their gratitude to the boys for what they have done during our time in Chile and challenged them to do even more in the future. We then walked to a soccer complex that consisted of over a dozen small futbol "canchas" where we played against one of the teams from Ambassadors of Sport, a new outreach effort which is partnering with IAM to better local communities. Despite losing 7-9 to a team of over-20s, they boys represented Agoura very well on the field and earned quite a bit of praise and respect from the opposing team and coach for their play. After the match, we walked back to Oriente to spend some more time with our host families before getting ready to leave tomorrow...