Spanish Satire

Wait. What’s Menudo? I wondered ignorantly as I sat down to a plastic cafeteria table surrounded by eager children and remnants of dilapidated piñatas unceremoniously wilting on the sides of the grimy walls. The kids were all speaking Spanish faster than a speeding bullet, which, in Guadalupe, Mexico, was not uncommon. The bullets, not just the Spanish. I turned to the orphanage director’s son.

“Hey, what’s Menudo?”

Oh, it’s tripe soup. It’s pretty good if you wash the intestines a couple times through.”

I gulped. This was clearly not a good start to my family’s first night as permanent staff members at Rancho 3M Orphanage in Guadalupe, Mexico. I had found myself sitting in this cinderblock structure (the only blonde-hair, blue eyed girl for a solid 200 miles) on account of my parents. They had not just decided to merely move our entire family away from our hometown, but they had decided that as a family unit, we would trade our cushy, country club lifestyle to work in an impoverished area of Mexico, caring for children who had been abandoned. We all yearned to provide for them a hope and a future: a chance for an education. To be more than just street smart. To have their existence mean more than knowing which gang is better to commit their life to. My family desired for them to be book smart.

For the first time in my 13 years on earth, I was genuinely frightened for my life. In addition to this burden of anxiety, I experienced a rough case of culture shock. Not only was I in the middle of the desert, but I had to connect with children who had experienced life on a completely different level: many were homeless, repeatedly beaten, fed dog food on account of extreme poverty. One young orphaned boy was even sold as a sex slave by his