Chaos

There is no better word to describe the past two days, than chaos.
Since it's a holiday week, most of the staff is on vacation, which doesn't leave enough Ayi's (care takers) at each house for all the kids. So, Micah, Kaitie and I are running the school this week, so the kids can be at school, instead of the houses. Yesterday was insane!  Just imagine it: Three foreigners and 30 special needs kids. Wow! I'm not sure how we survived... We weren't teaching them any classes this time, it was just recess basically. During the first session (8-11:30am) we pretty much had no idea what to do. We tried to get the kids to play games, or do something specific, but it just wasn't working... after Xiuxi (nap time), we all went back to face to the second session (2:30-5pm). We took the kids outside since it was fairly warm, but that didn't last long, seeing as more than half, if not all, can't walk, which means they were crawling around on the concrete and it just looked painful.. So we took them back to the school and tried to get creative! We did some story telling (dunno how much they understand of our Chinese), and played with balls, etc. There's one girl, not sure how old she is, I'm thinking about 8 or 9, that's really attached to me. She constantly wants to play games and make me run up and down the hallway with her on my back or spin her around. It was fun... but it's not like she's very light!
While I had the kids all in one place, I took advantage of it again, and took some more portraits. Hopefully I'm not forgetting anyone. I still have several houses full of kids to photograph in the next 10 days (which I only have 3 or 4 "free" days before I leave, since I'm working most of the time) - hope I get them all taken in time!

Today (and tomorrow - and again Mon-Wed next week), I worked as an Ayi in house 5, which is the baby house. They're so cute!
Last night, I couldn't sleep very well and ended up only getting about 4hrs. So 6am rolled around way too fast, to say the least! Marissa, Donna's daughter, called before I left this morning, and said she was going to escort me to house 5, since I have no clue where or how to get there (thank you!!)... We took a taxi and then walked a few blocks, etc. I can't tell the difference between anything around here.
I spent the whole day caring for the little rascals, and oh my goodness I'm exhausted now! And It's freezing in that place and their Xiuxi is 3 1/2 hours long (and I thought the 2hrs was bad), and it's so boring sitting in a freezing house for 3 1/2 hrs doing nothing. Not to mention working 10 hours straight is just tiring in itself.
When it came time to leave, I stopped in my tracks....how am I supposed to get back home??? I called Donna and she said to find the main gate (turn left, right, left, right, left...give or take what street you start on), then take a right and walk to the nearest intersection (not sure how many blocks that is), and then wait/flag down a taxi... The first 3 were full, the 4th one didn't know how to get where I needed to go. 5th times a charm? Yeah, either way I finally made it back safely.... Though, tomorrow I have to some how get back there, alone. I really hate taxi's. But I do have to admit I'm not really scared of their insane driving anymore. I'm pretty used to it...in fact, I feel safer in a car here, than I do in the states. lol.
I haven't heard from Kaitie or Micah to know how it went at the school today, but I can only imagine... it's gonna be a long week!  :)