A day in the life...

By no means is anything of this a complaint, this is just a very new environment to get used to. So, for those of you curious about what I am doing here, here is a day in my life of Casa de Esperanza. Each day there are shifts for caring for the kids of seven hours at a time, but the job is like any parent, the shift is never really over, there are always other things that need to be done that is impossible to do when trying to keep track of 15 children. They are on their school break that we call summer in the states, so for the next two months, there are 15 kids 24/7! We wake up at 7 and have a devotional with the kids, then it is breakfast, chores, playtime, lunch, naptime, more playtime, shower, dinner, rest of the chores, and then quiet time (movie) until 8 at which time they go to bed (sort of, try getting 15 kids to be quiet and go to sleep) so it is usually around 9 which is when the rest of us have our time to ourselves, so getting to bed early is a privilege I had once this week as I just decided not to do anything for myself but take a shower and go to bed. Feeling much better today as I feel much more rested than I have in quite a while. Getting used to the nighttime noise took a bit to be able to sleep through, the roosters around here are very confused and think all night is appropriate to be cockadoodledoing and getting the dogs all riled up to bark all night. Oh and there is a tree that grows some kind of nut that fall off the tree because of the heavy night winds and then hit the tin roof, it is enough to catch me out of a dead sleep several times a night.
I miss home sometimes, but at the same time, as soon as I stepped off the plane here, I felt at home. There's plenty to laugh about things that are so different from the states, but there is a sense to that this is comfortable and of belonging here, a sense of purpose, more than I have felt it quite a while, maybe ever. I hope I can find a job that let's me go back and forth between here and home more often.