Today Erica and I were able to spend most of all day with the children at the children's home. They were SO excited to see us! They are absolutely the most precious kids. I have only been here four days and I already can tell how hard it is going to be to leave. We pretty much had full control of the day which was kind of fun. We got their during their normal "school" time so we decided to stick with the schedule. We went over the ABC's and they did wonderfully! We played a game with learning them, which was a little harder for the younger ones, because the letters weren't in order, but it went fine! Then we did numbers and colors. They do them in french first then in English. They are doing so well with both! These kids are going to have sountern accents after its all over. (5's and I's are hilarious from a Haitian child) After school time is play time. Erica's VBS kids made lots of Frisbees for the orphans so we brought some along and went outside to play with them. The kids went nuts. They didn't really know how to play with them, but they enjoyed themselves none the less. After lunch is normally nap time then art, but they kid of got rolled all into one. So we had crying babies and paint splatters all afternoon. Crazy, but I wouldn't change any of it.
Funniest part of the day though was when one of the younger boys brought me big bubbles bottle to make bubbles. So we went out to the patio and I made bubbles. The kids when bananas! Surprisingly enough the babies more bananas then the kids. This one baby would yell so loud in an excited way to see the bubbles. He would laugh so hard when they came flying up in the air. I was laughing so hard it was hard to blow the bubbles. One baby was like a ninja and climbed on the chair to sit right in front to have a front row seat of all the fun. We did bubbles for ever. I never would have thought how long their attention span would be when doing bubbles!
There are some parts to Haitian culture that we are getting used too. They see child raising very differently. For example their are 8 babies, and they just do their own thing. If someone starts crying then they just cry. So Erica and I are always picking up babies trying to make them feel better and the ladies their just look at us and laugh and motion that its ok to leave them. We can never do it. But we can only hold so many babies! All in all it was still wonderful to be there. When Sara came to get us, the kids just latched on telling us by. I had like 5 kids all gripping so tight. It was so sweet. Being there is going to be so much fun.
The rest of the day was spent going to stores to get supplies for Guerlin's orphanage (cups, plates etc). And yes you heard that right, stores. It is kind of like a Wal-Mart in Port-au-Prince, and kind of not really. If Save-A-Lot, Dollar General, and Wal-Mart all mixed together and shrunk that is what it would be. Everything is pretty normal except the food. A box of cereal was over $6 in American!!! Crazy! It was slightly amusing being there. We went to several, Bel Mart, Deli Mart, and Mason Handal. We were trying to get to Mega Mart (which Sara kept calling "Haiti Mart"), but never made it. I never really experienced culture shock as you read in one of my first blogs, but I think that was because America and Haiti have nothing in common. But being in those stores which were like distant cousins to American Markets was definitely different. But more so they made me laugh. I just got a kick out of walking around and seeing all the varieties of things there, American brands and not.
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