it´s friday!

Today is friday and this week has been a much more relaxing one than last week. Last week included 22 hours of meetings and presentations in preparation for the upcoming year. In some ways, I enjoyed the fact that they really do treat me like staff. At the same time, putting in 32 hour shifts at the Hogar was a little more than tiresome. I will say, however, that spending that much time in meetings will definitely make people bond haha. I feel a lot more comfortable with the staff these days. I think I´ve been adopted into the family of educadoras. There are six educadoras who are pretty much in charge of scheduling all of the years´ activities for the girls. They are also the ones who spend the most time interacting with the girls. There always has to be three educadoras on night shift which means that each of them will have a 6 month period of straight night shifts. I´m finishing up my second month of night shifts. They haven´t been too bad. I owe a lot of how well I get along with the girls to these night shifts. I´ve been able to spend a lot more time with them one on one, helping them with homework, telling bedtime stories, and then there´s the fabulous task of trying to get them all up at 5am for chores.

I am happy to say that starting January, I´ll be an educadora on turno tarde...which means I only work from 2pm-7pm everyday woohoo! I´m really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed at night and also having the mornings unscheduled. I´ll be able to go in early when I want and learn some cooking and knitting skills before teaching a computer and english workshop while the girls are on vacation. I´ve also been talking with Yoni who is our social worker. I´m hoping to start accompanying her when she takes the girls to make home visits. And then since I have Saturdays off, we´re coming up with a schedule so I can take the girls out on one-on-one day trips. A lot of the girls don´t go to school and many of them don´t get visits. So they spend the majority of their time at the Hogar. It´ll be nice to spend time with them and explore some different parts of Cusco.

Christmas will be here soon! wow! I can´t believe how fast it is coming up! Meghan and I will have a few gift exchanges with the different Hogars and then we will also have a white elephant gift exchange/christmas celebration at our place next Saturday. Some of the girls will be able to go home to celebrate Christmas with their families...they are very excited for this. Many of them are preparing to make permanent returns back into their homes. Please pray for these girls. It is a bitter sweet thing to see them preparing to go back home. I´ve gotten so close to many and feel very protective over them. Different circumstances brought them to our Hogar. Many of them have spent years bouncing around different girls´ homes. I pray that God keep them safe and watch over them. May he prepare their homes and families for their re-entry and continue to make his love known to them regardless of whatever circumstances they may face in the future.