Week Nine...

Do you know what South Africa is incredibly good at?!?!  Celebrating Holidays! They take them ultra serious and by ultra serious I mean they take a lot of days off to “celebrate”. For example let’s take a look at Easter which as everyone knows was Sunday… Now at home I would still work on Friday and you can bet your bottom dollar that I’d be back at work come Monday morning.. but here in South Africa you don’t have to go to work half the day on Thursday, all day on Friday and all day on Monday! Now I understand Friday is Good Friday, but I’m still pretty sure that’s a work day in the USA, but Monday it’s not a holiday at all.. you just don’t have to work on the account that Easter was the day before. Sweet huh! Needless to say Week 9 was such a short work week. It seems the kids got over their crazy desires to be terrors like during Week 8 and this week they all just were mellow as ever. LOVED IT!! Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were normal days. Lots of coloring took place (I’ve never seen 2 yr olds be so dedicated at coloring), we did some puzzles, built some guns with legos (without Teacher Kamryn’s approval), ate lots of Bananas, and practiced the monkey bars on the playground. I’ve learned if you help one kid you better be willing to help ever kid on the playground.

We may have had a collision when playing on the playground… Nothing like 2 little one’s bonking heads and then turning on each other and punching each other.. hahahaa..

Teacher Kelsey had to help with the hugs and kisses following the head bonking.

Teacher Molly came and visited this week to see some of her favorites… We all pretend like we don’t have favorites but in all reality we do.. It really can’t be helped.

But then one of her favorites ate her headband…

Briat learned to climb the pole all by himself. Not very high, but he was still so proud of himself. I was quite proud too!

We played with some bubbles too! They LOVE LOVE LOVE bubbles! 

And I even had to get a bit bossy on the playground. I don’t like it but someone has to play slide monitor and keep the childrens from throwing sand at each other… And Me. 

My favorite part of the week though was Thursday when the kids all got picked up early due to the holiday. For the first time I got to be there when the parents picked the kids up and I got to meet them. Well some of them. It was really nice getting to see the kid’s parents and kind of see what their lives are like at home. For the most part all the kids come from really rough circumstances and we know and are told this, but at the same time a lot of the gritty details are kept hidden from us. I feel like when I got to meet some of their parents I was let into the circle of “Things we don’t want the volunteers to know”. For example one of my little girls was picked up by her dad. On his left arm was a tattoo of the number 27. In South Africa the numbers 26, 27 and 28 are gang related numbers that represent different crimes that they have committed. 27 represents “Violent Crimes” such as armed robbery etc. Seeing one of my favorite little girls scooped up by her dad who had a 27 on his arm really made things real for me. Other parents though were completely wonderful and just came up to me hugged me and said thank you. That made my day…. No my week.

Week Nine you were mighty fine!