We've been busy!

It has been a pretty busy week! We now have our room assignments at the orphanage and we have also been working in the hospital this week. I will be working in the Donald Duck Room (it is also called the Isolation room). This room is filled with the little babies (some with disabilities and some without) and also a few kids that are older but have severe disabilities and are very low functioning. I am really excited to be working with all the sweet babies. They just get so excited when we hold them! Rachel will be working with me in Donald Duck for the semester. We will work in the orphanage from 9-12 every morning and from 2-5 we will work in the hospital. The hospital is a pretty unique experience. We divide up into groups of two or three and we take different floors to go and play with the kids that don’t have moms. At the hospitals here, mom stays at the hospital with the baby if they are sick. We see lots of mothers in their pajamas because they have been there for quite a while. The moms really have to take care of their kids and the nurses just do medical stuff. So the children without the moms are often left in their cribs for long periods of time, so we come and change their diaper, leave a clean one for the nurse to use (or else they use cloth diapers), and then we hold the babies and play with the kids. Some of the children are really orphans and their moms abandoned them after having them. Others do have moms but they either don’t live close to the city, have too many kids at home to care for, or they can’t leave their jobs to stay with their baby. I hope this all makes sense. This is what we have been doing this week. It can be really tiring at times, but I really appreciate being able to sit down and just relax when I get home every day!