Day 5...

Here we are, day 5 of the trip (I think) and camp has officially begun for us. Before I get into the day I wanted to make a correction. Matthew (our hero for getting us here) is not 16 but 15. Yeah, this is an amazing young man. Also, sorry for the typos. Hopefully my meaning comes across. You type wherever and whenever you can before the memory goes.

So, we did meet with Mike but everyone else was already there going over for breakfast. It was raining and this was is funny. They brought a van over to basically bring the kids across an alley to keep them from getting wet and then unloading them on the other side, uncovered area, to the restaurant. I walked with Tiff and Matthew. When we got all the way across the street we met the boys that I was teamed up with. David was actually carrying one of them and thought they were his buddies. One boy is around 6 or 7 and the other maybe 5 or 6. I’m not really sure. One of them may have cerebral palsy, not really sure, but he has trouble with his legs and cannot do stairs. I do not think there is anything physically wrong with the other boy. The translators name is Ker. He is a 22 year old college student. This is his first year here at camp. He made a statement that he thought he was coming to “babysit” but instead more to be a “dad”. It is really a lot of work for the translators. More than we have to do. They keep them over night, take them to the bathrooms and many others things, most importantly being the communication.

Breakfast - nope - just like the last time at camp. I had the wonderful tasteless steamed dough bread. It literally has no taste at all but it’s food. The rest of the stuff I could not recognize with the exception of some boiled eggs. One plate was supposed to be scrambled eggs but I didn’t see it. Oh well, I gave thanks for the “bread” - all you really need. Both of my boys need some help eating so switched back and forth. They were both a little afraid of me but they were hungry enough to put that aside and let me help.

At this point Tiffani still did not know who she was teamed with but we did know that she had two kids and two translators. David and Morgan did not have their assignments either. The four of us broke off with Mike and did a little tour of the grounds and then headed to this “coffee room” which is being used for an assembly room. It is a good size room with a projector setup and PA system. We went over the rules with a few more of the staff and then everyone came into the room to be paired up and off to “family time”.

Tiffani was paired here with two girls. One is 10 or 11 and the other is 3. They are total opposites. The little one, MiMi, is cute as a button but doesn’t say much and is taking a little bit to warm up. The older girl, Jenny, is cute too. She has a personality just like someone back home (J). She will give you these looks that I cannot really explain but they are very funny. She can be very serious and get frustrated easily. I do not think there is anything physically wrong with MiMi but Jenny does have some finger deformities. I am not sure if they are from birth or not.

David and Morgan were teamed with two boys. One of them is named steven and I do not know the other boys names yet. They are both small. Steven does has some physical problems but I do not know exactly what they are or what it is called. I believe the other boy is okay physically, just very young too, maybe 3 years old? I will try and get more about their story in the next post. Who knows, maybe I can get David to blog a little???

So I came back to my room with the Ker and the boys and then Tiffani brought her “family” up as well. We pulled out the table and chairs and let them color for a while. It was pretty good. We were able to talk to the translators and share some stories and photos of our family back home. One of the girls just started being a guide for adoptive families within the last year so that was neat to talk to her a little. The boys liked the coloring but MiMi was not happy with it and started crying. Jenny was getting bored with the coloring so we broke out a puzzle for her. She had never seen one of these before and it was “interesting” giving her personality. We had to move the puzzle to the floor to spread it out and let her see what it was all about. Once she figured it out we were not allowed to leave the room until it was finished so we did show up to assembly a few minutes late. I think she really enjoyed it once she knew what it was all about. The boys pretty much stayed at the table and I helped them color. The older boy, who we are calling Tom wanted to get approval of how he was doing. The younger boy, who we are calling Alex, didn’t really care. I think he is definitely reserved and does not trust strangers. I’m not sure it this point how much time it will take for him to come around.

Assembly time is fun. We sing silly songs and dance, etc... The we played duck-duck-goose for about 20 minutes... They really love playing this game, especially being young kids this week. The age range is 3 to 10 or 11 but mostly I would say 3 to 8. Yes, even David was playing. I’m sorry but I didn’t get any photos of this. Maybe tomorrow. I did manage somehow to bust my big toe nail during the game. I don’t remember doing it but just a little bit ago I looked down and saw a little dried blood and Tiffani said, “Oh yeah, I saw that a while ago”. Guess I was having too much fun to notice.

We took a 20 minute break after that. Ker got the boys some milk boxes and Tiffani’s translators took her girls back up to the room for a few minutes. Then we all got back together for craft time. Today we made name badges. The kids really really like stickers and markers. They got to decorate the tags and then we glue them to a clothes pin. You will have to see the photo of MiMi. It is funny. We also colored in their memory books. This is something that the campers and volunteers both do together for a scrapbook from the trip. Alex ended up getting mad at us because we would not let him color on all of the pages. They are supposed to be set apart for each day of the week. He didn’t really want to have much to do with us after that.

From here it was off to lunch... I will leave it at that since we are getting ready to head off to KFC now - ICE CREAM, YEAH!!!!! and then the water slide back here at camp.

China Team out.