Wow it is only Wednesday and so much has already happened!! Monday we all met at 8:30 to get on a trolley and drive out more into the suburbs of the city to an apartment. The orphanage consists of kids that need a doctor or nurse’s attention often. If the kids don’t need that close contact with a doctor or nurse they are put in the apartments so that they can have a more home-like feel. This was our first contact with the kids and it was so much fun!! This just made me even more excited than I already was for this semester!!
We are not able to give out a lot of information or specifics about the children and their background or take any pictures of them so I will try my best to explain my experiences with you without going into too much detail!
There are 6 kids in each apartment and they are all fairly young, I do not know their exact ages but my guess is all under the age of 5 or 6. Each child in that room was so precious!! They had different disabilities and handicaps such as burn victim, autism, and down syndrome. The little boy with down syndrome was playing next to me and his little smile and contagious laugh had me falling in love with him in seconds!!
I forgot to say this at the beginning, but this week we are all going to the different homes and rooms with kids to see the whole program and what all the orphanage does to help these kids. On Friday we will go on longer rotations in the orphanage to work with the kids more and by the end of the day we will have to choose which room/groups of kids we want to work with for the remainder of the semester; and we can only pick one! (I have already fallen in love with all of the different groups of kids so I have no idea how I am going to be able to pick just one!)
The rest of Monday we had to go shopping and do whatever we needed/wanted.
Tuesday was our first day at the orphanage!! Tao, one of the psychologists at the orphanage and our guide the past few days, took us to each room to show us the different groups of kids and informed us of the different reasons those children were placed at this orphanage. All the children at the orphanage (and the apartments) are disabled in some way; physically, mentally, or both. The youngest child they had at the orphanage on Monday was only 6 weeks old. Also, a lot of the children they have there right now have brain paralysis and can’t move or talk very well if at all!! These children are some of the most precious and some of the most heart warming rooms because all of what they want to say to you comes through their beautiful eyes and their sweet smiles!
After our time at the orphanage we decided to go on a little adventure and find the ‘botanical gardens’ that are located here in Iasi. IT WAS SO PRETTY!! We took a 45 min tram to get to them but it was totally worth it! It is the 3rd largest botanical garden in the world and it was beautiful! Felt like home :) I will share lots of pictures with you all!
Today we went to more of the apartments and met even more precious little children!! (I seriously don’t know who I will choose to work with because I love them all!!) and then after we were there we went to a huge fruit market!! It was so fun and we got a ton of fresh fruit and vegetables! We got watermelon, raspberries, carrots, grapes, and tomatoes for our apartment :)
All the buildings have so many cute plants! These three pictures are from the orphanage! :)
Random head in the ground so of course we had to take pictures on it, haha
Two of my roommates; I am not the tallest in the picture anymore!! haha Yay!
(Emri on the left, Kendra on the right)
No comments:
Post a Comment