I Love Sleep!

Somehow, working out gets harder every morning. Really, I don’t know why it isn’t getting any easier. I was exhausted this morning and after working out and showering I decided to catch up on emails. I am behind in emails, my blog, pictures, planning future travels; basically I am behind in life.

However, none of that got done because I fell asleep! It really is not ok when 7:30am-8:15am is your first “nap” of the day. Khaly and I made it to the orphanage and did the normal routine. Except, it was a little different today. There is one boy that Khaly sometimes takes care of and it is really so sad to watch him. He is very self destructive (making himself throw up, punching himself in the head, hitting his head against the bars of the crib,etc.) I don’t know how one learns to be so self destructive at such a young age (he must be between 6 and 8) but it is so hard to watch. I saw him crying and punching himself in the face so I went over to pick him up (he will stop when this happens..so maybe his abuse toward himself is for attention). I walked around with him for a bit, but then it was lunch time so I had to put him back in his crib (which is SO hard to do because he will continue hitting himself). After I put him down and walked away, I felt my shirt was wet. I looked down to see a big wet spot on my hip. I didn’t even care to smell it to examine. I knew. I quickly walked to the sink, put it under the faucet and rung it out. The crazy thing is, if some kid pee’d on me in the U.S. I would be like, ewww gross. But I was just like, oh he pee’d on me, bummer. I did give Khaly a hard time and told her to tell him not to pee on me anymore.

When we got back to the main bus station Khaly and I headed back to the hostel because we had to go the bathroom. While the orphanage does have a bathroom, we aren’t a fan of the big cockroaches that also call it “home”. So, we do our best to hold it, which is hard because I don’t want to become dehydrated. What a catch-22!
After using our nice clean restroom the 3 of us headed out to the grocery store. Tomorrow we are volunteering at the soup kitchen and last week we asked what we could bring. We didn’t know if they needed more food, etc. but they said people would really appreciate a dessert of some sort, since they never get dessert! You’re talking to the right girl, I thought! So we headed out and found these individually wrapped “cakes” with marshmallow inside. We cleared the shelves and had to ask for more boxes. We got 28 boxes which is a little over 300 cakes! You should have seen the stares as we were leaving! Ken brought his huge backpackers backpack so we took all of the cakes out of the box and stuffed them in there. People literally stopped to check out what we were doing! It was funny leaving because he looked like just another backpacker, but he had 300+ cakes! Makes you wonder what other people are carrying around…

After we dropped off our groceries we caught a cab to the boy’s shelter. I feel a little bit better about the situation now. Basically, they are putting on a Christmas performance. I am not sure for whom, but I guess they need to spend the next 3 weeks practicing which is why we weren’t needed until January. However, since we had already bought a lot of supplies we still went to the school to drop them off. Hopefully they will enjoy the posters and the next volunteer can use them.

Hugs and kisses from a sleepy Julie!