Kaiizen Christmas

The next adventure after making a home base in Provo (thanks Robbie and Anna for EVERYTHING!) was to head down to Mexico for the annual Kaiizen Christmas Trip. This year is was a little different we left Wednesday night to stay at Whiskey Pete's so that we could drive in Thursday morning and have more time to play with the kids.
This is what I call addiction - just kidding it was like midnight and she fell asleep while we waited to get our room keys!
Yeah when you've been on a few trips this is bound to happen, unplanned!

That first night we had a great soccer tournament that had eight teams they played for 5 minutes each and the winner advanced while the losers battled it out for a double elimination tournament. The little boys won the loser's bracket and we had a proper Mexican vs American championship game but before what do you have to do - eat Gorilla Feet pizza of course! We ordered all this pizza from this place called Gorilla Feet they were huge and it was hilarious but surprisingly good.

The finish of the computer lab we built at the Kindergarten!

The next day we went up to the school and taught classes - my group was third grade math and fractions, and then of course we put on a carnival - I was stationed at the human parachute and we got the kids flying - sometimes too high but we caught everyone of them! There faces were the best some were so surprised and we were too when the first kid flipped in the air totally unplanned - Once again NO CHILDREN WERE HURT IN THIS STUNT! Then it culminated with a giant flour war - what a great idea, we passed out bags of flour, not dyed just plain white and when they said go it was on - the worst was after the flour was on the ground and some kids tried to pick it up and recycle it with another throw so then it had like sand and pebbles mixed in - no bueno!
The Human Parachute!

Flour War Fun! Me, Kat, and Brittany!

That afternoon we got the kids all dressed up by clothes that had been donated for them and then the real surprise - four limos pulled up! We took the kids through Ensenada to Wal Mart where they had a pillow case (on the outside was there name and on the inside was the name of who they were shopping for) each kid had a volunteer with them and they were given a budget of $500 pesos so about $50 US and we went shopping for about 45 min. Then they came home to a red carpet and a five course meal (mozzarella sticks, soup, salad, lasagna and bread sticks, and dessert of their choice). While the volunteers ate the kids quickly changed and then we got everyone together for the present tunnel of volunteers where they announced the kids names and they run through the tunnel of cheering volunteer to the end where we had organized it so each kid received a gift from the person who bought for them and then turned around and gave the gift they had bought for the next kid - that was great! Then it was a mad opening of presents and a lot of smiles and shouts from the kids to each other like thank you for the gift!

The kids were so surprised!

My Shopping buddy Jose!


The Red Carpet and "The Tunnel"

Saturday we woke up and had breakfast with the kids and cleaned up but then they had another group coming down so we left them just before lunch to go to a very poor community near Ensenada where we met twenty very impoverished families that we donated rice/beans/hygiene kits/and T-shirts too. Some showed us their houses and some of our volunteers walked up these very steep hills to get to the homes of these ladies. This is always a very eye opening experience for our volunteers - I always hate it just because it seems like we never have enough, there are so many families in need and it sucks to have to turn them away sometimes! But still you have to take the small victories when you can and realize that you are helping someone today and hopefully for tomorrow and that's what matters the most.

We finished the trip with a quick stop in Ensenada and then to our favorite taco stand and finally to sleep on the beach after a great little dance party only to get up at the crack of dawn to head back to Utah! There were some great people on this trip and my friend Amy Lou even flew all the way from Tennessee to come too and it's weekends like these that are some of my favorites!