This is now day three and I feel like we've settled in and become use to how everything works. We all sleep and have our meals in the Ministry Centre, which has great wi-fi. About 50 metres down the road is the children's home which has a girls wing and a boys wing with all together about 30 children aged 4-15 and also a nursery with 9 children aged 0-4. Further down the road is the teenage girls home which has about 26 girls living there. The thing i'm still getting use to is the crazy heat and humidity. I feel like I drink about five litres of water a day and sweat out six! My pee is always yellow (too much information?).
The ministry centre and children's home are located in a fairly densely populated community and therefore something is always happening in the street and people milling around. The t-intersection nearby serves as a basketball court and community meeting point. Last night a street band played there until about 2am and there are basketball games there most days with traffic kindly stopping until after a point is scored.
Basketball is massive here and most days we spend some time with the teenage girls helping them get ready for a tournament which has been really fun and one of my highlights so far.
So it's been a fun and different way to spend Christmas this year. We started the day with a shift in the children's home. Shifts in the children's home can be a little crazy, it's like babysitting 30 children who due to their culture have little concept of discipline or time, have bucket loads of energy and speak only a little English .Christmas day with them was very fun and really lovely to see them experience so much joy with their gifts. We then had a massive Christmas lunch. It rates up there with the best of them. Turkey, ribs, vegetables and pumpkin pie!! Yum! We then were able to have a little down time before we traded the Australian tradition of backyard cricket with a 2 hour game of basketball with the Long family and other English workers here. So much fun and much needed after our big lunch. I've now just finished my Christmas night with a shift in the nursery. I cannot tell you how many times I've sung 'Jesus Loves You' to get children to go to sleep. Seems to work well!
Looking forward to hearing about everyone's christmas's back home! xo
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