About five min before the town El Triunfo is the Escula Angel Manzano. The dirty yellow and blue buildings, accompanied by a rough sandy football pitch and cement basket ball court, are brought to life by 30 bright faced, enthusiastic, smiling children from ages 2 to 10. Every day when we arrived we were greeted by children screaming, "Good morning teacher!" (in English) and running to give us a hug and hand shake.

We began most days working with the littest children, who despite their incredibly cute smiles, were quite a handful. We sang songs such as"I like to eat apples and Bananas"and "Old Mac Donald" and colored a lot of pictures. We introduced them to topics such as colors, animals, and food. We played Tiburon and Pescaditos (Sharks and Minoes), which quickly became their favorite game mostly because they ran around screaming as we tried to catch them. Then we worked with the middle group and oldest group. We had fun talking about food, and animals and learning how to greet each other in English. They learned quickly and constantly wanted to do more.

At lunch time we all sat around the tables eatting rice, papchinas, bananas, and what ever the meat of the day was. Students constantly asked us, "how do you say.... (something)... in English?" and the answer would be heard repeated through out the rest of the lunch hour. Then we played football or basketball with them or watched them play marbles or pick up massive horn beatles.

Never have we been around students who had such a desire to learn. The children are open and will find their way into your heart. Working with these students is both fufilling and rewarding. It will be and experience that we never forget.

by Jenna McDaniel and Seth Draine