Nov 18

Today, I got peed on. Lixi decided to do her business while I was carrying her… and of course her diaper from home isn’t one that holds all that stuff in very well. Her diapers are pretty much an old shirt or rag that is held together by safety pins. And so I took Lixi to the bathroom to do the daily cleaning and changing. It was a good thing that I brought a sweatshirt today. I planned to change into the sweatshirt and wash the shirt that I had on. I didn’t get to do this as soon as I hoped to. After I finished cleaning and changing Lixi, I had to wash her clothes. After that, one of the boys scraped his knee really really bad and so I had to go into the office and pull out the gauze, tape, and antibacterial business. I start to put stuff away and another boy comes up to show me his huuuuge cut on his arm. I do the same deed to that cut and then I grab my sweatshirt ready to get changed. Then Laura (she’s the girl who I took to the doctor… she had something growing on her thumb) comes up and asks for more gauze on her thumb. Her poor hand is swollen and there’s puss coming out of the huge hole that the doctor made. Remember how I told you about the doctor that just stuck a syringe in her finger and then cut at it? Remember how I questioned that whole thing? Yeah, well, I know for sure that he didn’t do a good job because now it’s extremely infected. The poor thing hasn’t been smiling or talking much at all. She just sits down and is in tremendous pain. Isa told her that she needs to see another doctor and so she sent Tarynn to take her. Meanwhile, I’m still very stinky with pee on me. After I wrapped Laura’s thumb in more gauze, I was summoned by kids that were yelling and blaming people for hitting other people and saying bad words to people (chaos). I dealt with the problems the best I could. And finally, after cleaning a baby and her clothes, cleaning a few cuts and scrapes, gauzing up an infected thumb, and after timing-out many misbehaved children, I got to clean my shirt. I felt like the rest of the day continued to be chaotic. Also at the end of the day, Isabel’s son took something form Tarynn and me. I confronted him and asked him why he took it and he said that he didn’t take it. I told him that neither of us put his name on it. Isabel scolded him a little bit and then gave it to him afterwards. I was extremely frustrated. It didn’t bother me that he had it, it bothered me that he wasn’t learning that it was not okay to do that. His mother even had him write his name on a paper and it matched the handwriting on our thing. He still refused to accept that he did it. It made me so frustrated that I just turned around, finished cleaning another wound and walked out of the office without saying another word. Let me just say this… I’m tired. Very very tired.

Also, Amanda is really sick. Amanda is the girl that takes care of the younger girls at the Hogar during the week. I am the sub. I really don’t know how she does it. These girls have already made me cry before. They’re not always on the nice side. Even though I’m tired because I have to get up extra early and then go to work all day at the Infa, I think I’m getting to know the girls at the Hogar a little more. I’m closer to some of the Infa kids, but I feel like I should be closer to the Hogar kids because I live there. One night this week there were only two girls to put to bed on time. It was actually really fun. The other girls were out playing soccer with some of the other kids. I brought over a few chocolates and a little Spanish kids book that my dad bought me. We ate chocolate and read some of the book. Then I put on some music off my laptop and the two girls feel asleep to Nat King Cole. I had a lot of fun just reading with them and joking with them. It reminded me that even though I’ve had some really hard days, I love these kids and these memories are memories I’ll want to keep close forever so I need to soak up as much as I can now.