A Few Days in the Life...

Okay, as promised, here is a little taste of what days bring in South Africa! :o) I've decided to give you a few since every day is so completely different:

Tuesday July 1st, 2008
7:40 am - Wake-up (SO nice that the office starts at 9am... means I can sleep in a little bit!)
8:45 - 9:45 am - Supervision meeting with a house mom of 8 girls (I am the Regional Manager for 5 of our homes, so I meet with each of those moms "officially" once a week to make sure things are going smoothly and to address any concerns or issues with the home and kids.)
10:00 - 11:00 am - Host a pastor from Durban (a city on the eastern cost of South Africa) who wanted to get an idea of how our program operates
11:00 am - 12:30 pm - Try to get a little work done in the office (planning schedules for hosted visits by Americans, typing up reports on the homes, responding to the endless stream of emails etc!)
12:30 - 2:00 pm - Errand running with 6 little girls (the kids love coming ANYWHERE with me... they even ask to come to the gas station to fill up the car... always so much fun, but makes errands much more of an ordeal! The term "herding cats" often comes to mind!)
2:30 - 4:30 pm - Take Miriam (the other American friend on staff, she's 27) and Muriel (our Office Administrator) to visit the angel baby who has been back in the hospital for his lungs... his heart is fine now, but his lungs are another story...
5:00 pm - Take the same 6 little girls back to the grocery store because they forgot to tell me that they each need to bring a box of cookies to Holiday Club at church the next morning when we went to the store earlier in the day (they're on a school break right now)
6:00 pm - Come home, shower, put on sweats and eat stew :o) while watching a movie and then having some quite time and reading a book
11:40 pm - sleep!

Wednesday July 2, 2008
6:30 am - Wake-up and decide to go see the baby in the hospital before heading to the office
7:15 am - Stop by Mugg & Bean (as close as South Africa gets to Starbucks) for a hot chocolate and lemon & poppy seed muffin to go :o)
8:00 am - Arrive at Sunninghill Hospital to visit our little guy, who is always content to just be held with his head curled again your heart for hours, except for when the physio woman has to suction out his lungs. He HATES this and screams as he looks at me with eyes that say "I can't believe you're letting them do this to me!!!!"
9:15 am - just as I am about the leave the doctor comes through on rounds and then, concerned that the scar tissue they removed from his airway last week may be returning, begins bringing specialists through to evaluate him. They decide that the scar tissue is probably back and want to do a CT scan at 3:30 pm to see the entire airway and lungs.
10:45 am - The doctors leave just in time for me to race from the hospital for a meeting
11:05 am - 1:00 pm - Arrive 5 minutes late for a supervision meeting with another house mom (this one has 13 boys, ages 8 (twins)-18). Towards the end of our meeting the boys arrive home from Holiday Club at church and decide to show me the "fashion show" they came up with the night before. This involves them hiking their pants up to their chests, trying to look like nerds, and then individually doing a funny walk across the floor as they introduce themselves. Meanwhile one of the boys beats the table like a drum while another does a rap about each boy to the beat. They do a huddle in the middle of the room before the show to psych themselves up. It is hysterical and I laugh so hard I cry. :o) They then tell me that the girls spilled the beans about the fact that I took them to see "Kung Fu Panda" and ask when I am going to take them... looks like I have a movie date on Saturday with 13 boys! :o)
1:00 pm - I receive a call from the nurse at the hospital asking when I can come in to sign a consent for the baby to be put to sleep for his CT scan - not sure why they didn't think of it in the morning!! I then race to the hospital because I have a hot date at 1:45 pm with 9 little boys :o)
1:45 pm - 4:30 pm Meet Pam (a volunteer and great friend!) to take 9 little boys (the oldest is 10) to see "Kung Fu Panda". It is quite an experience to get 9 little boys all sitting down and then run back for 9 sets of popcorn and "Slurpee" style drinks while you see them running out of the theater to "make a wee" every few minutes! The boys loved the movie and don't have a shy bone in their bodies, calling out "yeah! get him!" at the top of their lungs during the movie, and practice all of their new kung fu moves in the parking lot before a 6 year old asks me if he can drive us home... "Ummmmm, no. Please get in the car."
4:30 pm - 7:00 pm - Head over to Miriam's house for tea and some hanging out before she leaves that night on a 2 week visit home to Michigan.
7:30 pm.... More stew :o)

Thursday July 3, 2008
9:00 am - 11:30 am Pick up my house parents and take them to the house parent prayer meeting (this happens once a month when we try to get all of the HPs together - the first time I was quite taken aback since the African style of worship and prayer is a long way from San Clemente Presbyterian... I love both!) :o)
11:30 am - 12:30 pm - Get my first look at our most newly purchased home with Angie (our amazing director... just love her!) We try to figure out how many kids we can put in each room... I think this home will easily hold 9 or 10.
12:30 - 1:30 pm - Spur of the moment management meeting since we all happen to arrive at the office at the same time! It is decided that I will probably start managing a 6th home sometime in August when it opens. We debate the best plan for our recently-arrived 8 year old girl who has experienced horrible sexual abuse for 2 years and so is quite hard to control and has to be supervised at all times since she does not yet understand what kind of things are not appropriate for children. She's never been able to have any kind of boundaries... I think our best bet is going to be to try and find her foster parents who can focus on her completely.
1:45 pm - Supervision meeting with a house mom of 9 girls.
2:45 pm - Grab KFC for lunch :o)
3:00 pm - Pick up Claire (our Occupational Therapist, and another great friend!) and head to the hospital together to see the baby. Traffic means it takes 40 minutes to go 4 miles.
6:00 pm - Arrive home from the hospital feeling so heartbroken for leaving the baby alone there. He isn't feeling well and has started keeping his fists clenched from being poked and prodded all the time. Usually he is a happy, goofy little boy, so it is just hard to see.
6:45 pm - Can't take it anymore and head back to the hospital to hold the baby until he finally falls asleep in my arms at 10:30 pm.
10:45 pm - Speak to Gerda (our CEO) for a while about the baby and about how things are going in general.
12:30 am - sleep!

Friday July 4th, 2008
9:00 am - Arrive at the office with my Mugg & Bean muffin and a Starbucks hot chocolate (thanks Jodi!!!!) :o) And reply to emails from the last 2 days where I've been in the office for a total of about an hour.
10:00 am -11:00 am - Supervision meeting with a house mom of 8 girls.
11:00 - 11:45 am - Work in the office. It's decided that I should attend the arbitration meeting on Monday for a domestic assistant who says I fired her from one of our homes and wants 8 months of pay (Pretty sure I would know if I had fired someone... and I definately haven't)
12:00 pm - Head to the hospital to see the baby
12:45 pm - Angie & I meet with the baby's pediatrician to learn the results of Wednesday's CT scan (they didn't want to tell us over the phone). In short, the heart condition that went unrepaired for his 2 years of life before he came to Acres, has caused a tremendous amount of damage to his lungs. There is one section of one lung that is undamaged. Our best, and only, option for him is to keep him in the hospital for a month (heart breaking) and load him with medication to try and get his lungs into the best shape that we can. Hopefully in a few weeks the pneumonia and infection will be gone and the swelling will be at a minimum from the medicine so that he can undergo an operation to remove a portion of his trachea that has been scarred and is now making his airway too narrow. The nerve wracking part is that this is an operation that can only be done once (there is only so much trachea you can remove... not enough to take pieces out twice) so we want to give it the best chance of being successful. If this operation doesn't work then there are no more options and we will loose him... so this HAS to work.
3:00 - 3:30 pm - Work in the office.
3:30 - 4:30 pm - Supervision meeting with a house mom of 9 boys (our kung fu experts from earlier in the week). The meeting ended right at bath time. I heard lots of laughter coming from one of their bedrooms. When I pushed the door open I found 6 little boys standing in their underwear who started laughing hysterically as they screamed "It's Mommy Kelli!!!!! Ahhhhh!" and started jumping behind their beds trying to hide their almost-naked bodies. I dramatically covered my eyes and yelled "Ahhhhhh! It's naked boys everywhere!" which brought more hysterical laughter. :o)
5:00 pm - Arrive home and eat dinner (guess what I ate... stew... shocking! Finished the last of the batch, thank goodness!) while watching a movie.
6:30 pm - Swap cars with a house dad so that I can take all 13 of his boys to see "Kung Fu Panda" the next day...
7:00 pm - Arrive at "Game Night" at a guy's house to hang out with friends :o) Learned a little bit about Rugby as we watched the highlights reel on the news from the day's games. (Did you know Holland had a rugby team?! And that some guys wear a soft helmet to prevent scar tissue build-up on their ears?!) I then got the winning answer for our team in "Cranium" by knowing the definition of the word "curmudgeon"!
12:15 am - Headed home :o)

And now, it's Saturday, and here I lay in bed at 10:45 am having just typed out the play-by-play of most of my week. :o) I hope I've helped give a little bit of a picture of exactly what it is that I do all day :o) Last week, of course, was completely different because I was hosting a donor team of Americans... I do love that every day is different! :o)

Alright, off to get dressed and take 13 boys to see "Kung Fu Panda"! (Third time seeing it is bound to be just as exciting as the first :o) haha)

See lots of you NEXT MONTH!!!! YAY!!!!