Visit to Colombianitos

Diana and I had a great visit to Colombianitos. Probably my favorite in terms of interaction with the kids. We went with Diana's sister and her fiance from Belgiam who is a very good soccer player. We arrived right when they were about to begin practice for the 10-12 year olds.

First,we met the two new children that Diana and I are sponsoring - Yubiseli and Julian. The child we sponsored before has now graduated and so we asked Colombianitos to be able to sponsor both a girl and boy in Medellin. By sponsoring a child for $25/month, they get all the uniforms and supplies they need to attend school. We brought each one of them a t-shirt and it was great to actually meet them in person.

After that, they started practicing and I asked the coach if Robert and I could play with the kids. They had 3 different scrimmages going on and Robert and I got to play in all three of them. The kids were soooooo excited. I felt like a celebrity as they surrounded both of us, asking lots of questions. All the children were smiling, laughing, and just showed a lot of curiousity in who we were. Afterwords, as we were walking to the offices, Diana was surrounded by all the girls asking lots of question. It was great fun and always a pleasure to see these children who have very little in terms of money and material things, but who still manage to love life like they do.

The sad part is that our of 350 children in the Goals for a Better Life program in Medellin, only 29 are sponsored. The other 320 children are responsible for getting the supplies and uniforms they need for school. The waiting list of children in need of sponsorship is quite long.

I big shout-out goes to the cover designer of Peak Performance Poker, Per Arne Dahl, aka Primitive in the ITH forums for donating his cover design fee to Colombianitos. I wish I had tracked all the money ITH'ers have donated to Colombianitos over the year, both through ITH and on their own as it is in the thousands of dollars. Just another example of what a great community ITH is.

So on to poker, I played last night, finishing 3rd in one tournament and bubbling another. I lost AK to A3 and JJ to A8 to go out in 3rd, otherwise had a great chance to win. Unfortunately, I lost $250 on the night as the tourney I cashed in was the small $50 turbo at Cake. I think I've final tabled Cake now in about 1 in 3 or 4 tournaments I've player there so far this month. Still waiting on my win though!