the orphanage

from the top....

• one of my sophomores, Barbara, with an orphan. She's Hungarian, so they adored her!
• two of the orphans. We noticed they tend to look very serious for pictures -- and then smile as soon as it was taken!
• Our girls painted nails, made friendship bracelets, and gave out lots of hugs. Here's one orphan displaying her sparkly nails.
• our high school kids taking a break during lunch -- notice how exhausted they look. It was pretty draining.
• one of the senior girls, Katie, and me. An orphan took this picture -- they loved our cameras and literally wore the batteries out in every camera we had there!

It was a difficult trip, and not in the ways I had expected. For starters, this was the most I've ever struggled with the language barrier. Many of these kids had some mental problems and couldn't quite understand that I didn't speak Hungarian. It was pretty frustrating to not be able to talk to them! They were so excited to have us there, and they really latched on to us. It was hysterical; when we left, they went around asking for our phone numbers. I'm curious as to what they would have done with them, since we couldn't communicate in person!

Most of all, I was impressed with our students. Many of them have grown up here, so they speak Hungarian pretty well. Some of the Chinese students speak Hungarian better than English, so it was fun to watch them step up and take more initiative. And the students did it all -- they prepared arts and crafts, a funny skit and its translation, some fun kid's songs in Hungarian, games (who knew that middle-school aged kids would beg for duck, duck, goose?) and a brief message. It was really inspiring to watch my students in that environment. And they're planning another trip, for a weekend, in the spring. I really wish we could have done something like this back in the States.

Have an excellent Sunday...