Another Week....Gone

This week flew by. Monday feels as if it were yesterday, but here I am ready to go away for the weekend. Although it was an extremely fast week, it was probably the toughest week I have had here thus far. The children at the orphanage were more of a handful than usual. Running, kicking, hitting, screaming and crying are the norm, but this week, they took it to the next level. Not only did I have the older (10 year old) boys come into the baby room and try to hit the babies, but they decided it would be a great idea to jump over a fence into the play area for the big kids. Thankfully, they got in trouble and were calm for the remainder of the week. This was Wednesday. On this same day, I had a girl, Diana, try to come into the room. Because she was younger I was able to keep her out for a while. She eventually made her way over the childproof gate and into the room when I was tending to one of the babies. I chased her around like a nut, finally got her out, and then she tried to spit on me. Spit on me. Three separate times.

On other days, the kids would be hitting each other and crying more than usual. We stopped bringing them paper and colored pencils because they were just causing more problems than there needed to be. But, Friday came, and they were worn out. Today was a pleasure. I played basketball this morning with the older boys for a bit, then got my hair done in "Salon Beleza" by two of the older girls, and spent some time throwing the  younger kids around in the air. If they were like this twice a week, I would be so proud of them! But, I keep telling myself, "Baby steps."

This week was stressful for another reason. My parents shipped me a new computer because my old one decided it was a good time for the fan to stop working. The computer finally arrived on Monday, and the Fed-Ex man told me I needed to pay a ridiculous sum of money to the Brazilian government. That was not happening, so I called my dad, and we decided we would ship it back home in order to avoid the fees. To our surprise, since it was in Brazil, we had no choice but to pay the fee, or give it up. So yesterday, it finally returned back to me and I am loving it! Thanks dad!

Yesterday, I got my hair cut for the first time since September 2009. I am still unsure of what caused me to want to get this done, but I did it. It is not much shorter than it was, but I now have side bangs. It was very interesting to try to have a conversation with the stylist, but I got lucky because the woman sitting next to me spoke a fair amount of English!

This weekend, I am headed off with Mary, Emanne, and Asbjorn to Praia De Forte, the beach we accidentally went to two weekends ago while trying to get to Arembepe. We are spending two nights there and are very excited to see what it will bring us!

Despite my roller coster of a week, I cannot believe that I only have two weeks left here. The thought of leaving here makes me so upset, although I have Costa Rica to look forward to! But for now, baby steps.