Week 11

Wow it seems like I've been getting a little bit behind on my blog... There's a few reasons attributing to this. For starters it seems as if my lap top charger has decided that it's life is no longer worth living because it's passed on and although I tried to conserve the battery life of my lap top it also has died. Second I've been moving around alot and haven't had a lot of time to sit down and blog about whats been going on in my life.
Week 11 was just fantastic though. Despite it having a lot of lasts. It was my last full week with the kids, and although that really mad me sad, I made a point to take advantage of every moment with the kids. Meaning instead of offering to cut the fruit I instead played with the kids while Teacher Leoni cut the fruit. I also made a point to get each and every one of those little ones in my arms and give them lots of hugs and kisses. I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up at least 4 times this week. haha.
We are still learning about our families and the kids are all getting excited about my Mom and Grandma coming next week!! I know they will just adore the kids and the kids are gonna love them too. This week we've focused alot on animal families and how some animals mate for life and some don't. I enjoyed telling them about elephants and how they are a herd forever and how the mama elephant is the matriarch and that what she decides the whole herd does. I then informed them that they have to listen to their mama's too! Only time will tell if that little bit of information sticks with them.

This week I also did a bit of a personal project with the kids. Personal meaning it was for my benefit only, though I think the kids were quite fascinated by the whole thing. Since I've finally come to the conclusion that taking home a child is going to be an impossible task I decided that I needed to do something that would allow me to take home a bit of each of them. I had been toying around with different ideas for several weeks, and only after seeing what a few other volunteers did, did I really realize what I wanted to do. I decided that on a piece of canvas I would do the footprints and handprints of each of my kids and then when I got home I would paint on the outline of Africa around the footprints and handprints. It went alot smoother than I thought it would and overall I am quite pleased with the project!
Well I can't even believe I only have one more week in South Africa. This experience has been absolutely surreal and something I'll never regret!