Year two at the fair - impressed again










If you read the post 'impressed by an eight year old'(August,2009), you'll know that last year, we took 4 kids (2 kids from 2 families) to the fair in Antigua. I've since met all of the kids from both families and so our trip this year was with 7 kids.

It was a little more difficult this year to arrange because we needed to coordinate with the parents a day we could take them all together. What made it a logistical nightmare was that the older kids had to work (I'm talking about 11 and 12 year olds here selling ice cream and shining shoes)and so the weekends were not an option. During the week, the parents were OK with our taking them when they should be in school (only 2 go to school) but I wasn't. So we ended up settling for a Tuesday evening after school and a slow work day.

There's always something about these kids that impresses me. This time, when we arrived, all rides but two were stopped because the generator wasn't working and they'd had to go to Guatemala City for a new one. There were two manual rides where the operators physically spun them - a small ferris wheel probably no higher than 10 feet and a carousel - both really meant for children younger than the group we had.

Like last year, they were all allowed to select 2 rides. Since there were only 2rides available, and not the fun ones, I thought that they might prefer to leave and return the next day. I know kids are into immediate gratification and tomorrow may never come but what I expected was a little bit of sulking followed by agreement or disagreement. Well, no sulking and emphatic disagreement. They rode the carousel, threw their arms up in the air as if they were on a roller coaster and immediately settled into Plan B.

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