We're here for the KIDS

And of course, last but not least in this crazy slew of overdue posts, we've been playing with and caring for the KIDS!!   I (David) get to interact with lots of different groups of kids each day.  When Bryson is busy or isn’t here (like when is in the US for Thanksgiving right now...), I drive the four special-needs boys to their school in town.  We listen to a radio station that plays popular music, and sometimes American music.  They overplay their most popular songs, so the boys now know some of the songs and most of the choruses.  They have various levels of difficulty in speaking clearly, but we all sing along none the less, at times with excessive head bobbing or even all out dancing.  Sometimes in the mornings I get lucky and Jo needs help with the kinder boys, like today, when I supervised their snack eating while staging epic dinosaur action figure fights.  

Every afternoon at 12:30, I walk over to the school to escort the preschoolers back to the orphanage.  The little preschool girl from the orphanage has quite a bit of trouble talking and is very shy, but now we have our routine where I hold her hand, we walk down the path, and I ask her about her day.  She is very particular about holding my left hand—if I happen to carrying something else in my left hand and I hold out my right hand instead, she gives me an impatient look and stubbornly waits for me to stop this crazy right-hand-holding nonsense and carry things with my right hand instead. 

Then, every afternoon between 2:00 and 5:00, I’m in the library doing individual and then group tutoring, as well as monitoring recreational internet time, for the older boys and girls at the orphanage.  My specific tutorial kids are the older boys, but I help with individual tutoring for a couple of the girls and I monitor internet time for all of them.  

In addition to these normal scheduled times, there are other random needs that come up that the volunteers help with.  Last week, Courtney and I spent a couple hours babysitting the baby girl and the three kinder boys.  It was very fun—long enough to be able to connect with the kids, and short enough for us to not get tired and them to not get bored or naughty.  Here are some pictures from our fun:  -D

The kids love "vueltas," where you pick them up and spin them around.  This picture happened after I started with one kid, then had one in each arm, after which the third felt left out so I just added him to the middle.

So cute...and the kids too ;-D

Courtney made an under the chairs obstacle course/maze that the boys very much enjoyed