Long Good Day!!

Had a very long but very good day. I think I'll just make a lot of medium/kind of long posts instead of one really really huge long one. Of course pictures aren't loading right now...I'll try those again tomorrow. There are 4 posts following this so start here and keep reading!

Started off with some fog and really cold wind. We don't have fog here so I woke up thinking that someone was burning trash, then panicked a little thinking that there was a huge fire. After a while I remembered that fog exists in the world and eventually figured things out...in my defense it was early morning and fog really is a novelty around here!

Then we loaded boxes into the cars and took them out to the camp for the distribution. We went to the main school first and it was amazing. All the kids were in their classrooms seated and waiting for us. We just went to each classroom, gave one bag to each kid, then left. Each classroom had at least 60 kids if not more but they were so well behaved...of course their teachers were holding long sticks to whip them with (normal) which might have had something to do with it.

The whole thing went so quickly and smoothly that other people outside the school didn't even realize what was going on until it was over so we weren't completely mobbed by people demanding we give them one too. PTL b/c those situations can turn really ugly really fast.

Even our assigned security guy got in on the action and helped pass things out. Good thing, because he wasn't doing much to keep us 'safe' with that pen and paper he was using to write down every single thing that we said or did...he'll use all that in the report he writes up on us later.

After the main school we went to the kindergarten and passed out more. I love the little kids, they're just so cute! They were so excited and were singing and clapping while they waited for us. When we handed them out at first the teachers told them not to open them so they wouldn't get all their stuff mixed up and lose things but there's really no way you can keep 60 5-yr olds from opening a present and after about 2 minutes they had all dug in.

It was just so amazing, watching this room full of excited little kids opening up what is probably their first surprise present ever. They were holding up each thing, showing each other and laughing...It was like Christmas morning except better! We put chips and cookies and candy in each one but I didn't realize what a luxury all that was until all these little kids started jumping up and down excited about their individual sized bags of chips.

Of course they all ate their candy, chips and cookies before we even left but what was really funny was that some of them also tried to eat their soap. Each bag had a bar of soap in it. I know that they have soap so it's not like they've never seen it before, but I doubt they've ever seen bars of soap in individually wrapped cardboard boxes before. They thought it was candy and quite a few of them were trying to eat it. Even though it tasted kind of gross they are little and just figured it was some kind of strange, special American candy!!!

They sang some songs for us before we left. I made a video of them but there's no way my internet is fast enough to load a video so sorry. Then they all said a huge shukran (thank you) in unison. And those of us working here want to say a huge thank you to all of y'all who were involved in making this project a reality. You brought joy to our hearts and blessed a lot of children today.