Pebbles Day 1

Today was my first day at L?Avenir Vineyard for the Pebbles Project. The following are the links for both: http://www.lavenir-south-africa.com/an/index.php and http://www.pebblesproject.co.za/index.php The Pebbles Project overall goal is enriching the lives of children from disadvantaged backgrounds with special educational needs, especially those whose lives are affected by alcohol.
I was a bit nervous going into today because I had never met any of the children, and the only thing I knew was that we would be cooking. As soon as they began arriving from school to the small structure the afterschool club is housed in, I felt instantly at home. For the most part all of the children were between the ages of 6 and 10. There were also two older girls, one 17 and the other 19 who joined us in their official school uniforms, and I was surprised to see they were happy to do the activities we had planned for the kids. After they all arrived we made small cookie like pastries that could be baked in a toaster oven, and the kids were all surprisingly very into the design of their pastries and making sure they had the perfect amount of sugar on them. Some of the children have fetal alcohol syndrome meaning that they were all at different ability levels, but all of them eagerly accepted any help I gave them.
They quickly lost interest after the cookies started baking and we all went outside to play games with a tennis ball that rivaled ?butts up.? The tennis ball they were using was pretty dismal and looked like it had been through a few too many thunderstorms. The hilarious part that happened next was somehow this one tennis ball ended up in a deep, dark hole and no one could fetch it. We were left gameless, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to start singing current pop songs. We began with Shakira?s Waka Waka, that the girls taught me the dance, and we then moved on to Justin Bieber and Lil? Wayne?s A Mili. The kids were absolutely hysterical, dancing, and the boys loved shaking their behinds like Beyonce. I cannot wait for next week, especially because they promised to help teach me Afrikaans (I am so impressed by how well they know English!)
Besides throwing tennis balls, and singing the other thing the kids love to do is pick each other up. Here are two 7 year old twins Jason and Justin, as well as Felix, readily posing for the camera.