Arriving at Jinhal Metro station a few minutes early I enjoyed a Pineapple yoghurt and an orange juice for breakfast. My driver arrived a little while later and I got to the Orphanage just before 9am.
Today was quite awkward because for some reason the nurse who was the only person who spoke english was not there, leaving me floundering and guessing abit in the very relaxed structure of the day. First I sat with the 3 year olds teaching them pat-a-cake and row row your boat, they were pretty good at both before I left to take 3 older children downstairs to the volunteers room to play with the toys I had bought in.
They loved the little books and enjoyed knocking down any towers I built with the blocks before we made the longest dominoes rally we could.
The thing they clearly enjoyed most was an activity I use to do as a nursery nurse. It was squirting blobs of shaving foam on a table and the children just smearing it across the table and writing their name and drawing pictures in the foam. They loved it and so did I. One little chap, whose name I never caught got a bit covered but he cleaned up quickly.
From here is was 10:30 and time for the children to have lunch and then their nap. The plan at this point was to sit with babies for the last hour until 12pm when I would get my taxi back to the metro station. For some reason between Tuesday and Today everyone needs permission from the nurse to sit with the babies according to the note on the baby room door,. With nobody speaking English and nothing to do I communicated the best I could with one of the senior members of staff that I would need the taxi at 11am instead of midday.
I enjoyed this volunteering experience and I learned alot though if it were not for the two american ladies on Tuesday I am not sure I really could have offered anything at all. I just would not have known what was going on. I do wonder if the few days of volunteering I did is best sorted to this organisation, if I was living in Shanghai perhaps volunteering here would work better.
