helloooo friday!

CHILLING OUT in my house. Just me, my Nescafe, my doodle pad and Rachmaninoff.

Note that I didn’t mention Timmy.

That’s right, my loves. Yesterday I found a home for Timmy. It was very sad and difficult to see her go (and I half expect the kid that took her to bring her back today saying he changed his mind) but I really feel it’s for the best. I travel too much and things are too crazy at the Dar Chabab to bring her to work with me all the time, so she was spending too much time alone in my dark house.

Besides bidding farewell to Timothy Ann, yesterday was hands down the funnest day I’ve had at work. Word is telling me that “funnest” isn’t a word…but saying “most fun” seems awkward here.

It started out like a typical day with 30 kids screaming at me at once. There were the usual requests for basketballs and ping pong paddles, but since the Reading Race is still going on I’ve got a ton of kids on my hands begging me to read English books with them.

I think I mentioned earlier that I’ve been trying to train them to embrace sign-up sheets, and it’s slowly starting to backfire. They haven’t so much embraced the concept…it’s more like they’ve become completely obsessed with it. If for some reason I stray from the list order (for instance, yesterday a girl came in who, for school schedule reasons, can’t come to Dar Chabab as often as others) there is complete and total pandemonium. Seriously, heads roll, children cry and some participants threaten to quit the race.

I was just about to go apeshit on everyone and cancel the competition completely, when I looked up to see that one of my DC regulars had re-arranged all the books on the shelf so they stood more neatly, cleaned up my desk and was now re-writing the list in a neat hand so I could read it more easily.

Can I just say, OH MY GOD. My heart melted, I felt like the Grinch watching the Whos sing despite waking up on Christmas morning to find their dingdanglers and gadjinglets stolen.

This angel of a kid made me so happy I was able to get back in control of all the other kids, sending a few home for the day, arranging to read with others for as long as they were able to stay at Dar Chabab (we ended up staying until eight) and compromising with the kids that had to go home that I would put everyone’s names in a box and do a drawing for Friday’s reading order.

Once some of the more wild kids had gone home, five or six of the boys and I hung around reading and playing until eight and generally had a blast. I was actually laughing and having fun without being stressed out about every tiny thing happening around me, and let me tell you it felt nice. The boys even offered to “bodyguard” me home because we didn’t leave the Dar Chabab until well after the sun had gone down.

It seems like every time I am on the cusp of a nervous breakdown something in life gives and I’m able to remember why I like being here and why I currently love my work. Hamdullahhhhhhh.