Due to some changes in funding and laws, we've had a pretty dramatic change in staffing. One of the educadoras has left, one is on vacation and might return as a day employee only, our administrative assistant will help us out now only on weekends as a volunteer, and our cook will hopefully be back in a few weeks. For now, we're holding down the fort with 47ish girls, two sisters, and two volunteers. Yikes.

A few weeks ago I moved in to one of the two dorms and took on a few extra duties outside of teaching and tutoring during the day.I'm now the only one in the hogar from 6am until about 8:30 am. Every day, after seeing all the girls up, dressed, fed, and ready to go, I feel like supermom! Fortunately, the older girls help out a lot with the littlest ones. After prayer, I'm also the only one in the hogar for an hour so during dinner time until the sisters arrive again. I thought it would be really overwhelming to be here alone with all 47 of them on a regular basis, but I've gotten used to it pretty quickly. Although I'm working more hours, it's nice to take advantage of this time to catch up with some of the older girls, since most of the school support I do is with the elementary schoolers.

The lazy days of summer are really taking hold of the girls. I thought a full-on riot was taking shape the other day when I forced them to play for an hour after dinner before watching TV. "But Amber!! You're so evil!!! We don't even know what to do!" Exactly...that's how I know you've been watching too much TV. Getting all four dozen of them out back and introducing them to tunnel tag and duck duck goose seemed to break the spell of that bewitching glowing box for a few blessed minutes. They transformed from droopy-eyed zombies back in to little girls who laughed and played and cared about something besides Korean pop-stars. It was worth the many dozen times I was called "mala" and the comical threats to call the sisters and report the terrible abuse I was inflicting upon them by depriving them of their precious "tele."
Quote of that day, "You guys, if Amber keeps serving dinner, she might make us play EVERY DAY!" Sorry, girls, I'll be dragging your butts out to the soccer field every chance I get as long as I'm in charge at night. Which, considering our budget, is going to be quite awhile. Bwahahahaa!

We also have two new little ones (6 and 4) in the hogar and in my dorm. They're pretty cute, but they're still getting adjusted. It takes awhile for the girls to adjust to the norms of the hogar. Some of those lessons stretch our patience, and some our compassion ("you can come out from under your bed now. I'm going to scold you, not hit you"). Here we are with the other youngest girl in the hogar:

From Paseo December 2010