Thursday, January 19 - Part Two

Thursday, January 19

Some of the older boys at the boys table -- check out the strollers in the back too!

I have a feeling the workers in our room at the orphanage may not be too happy with me when I leave.  The first day we were here both Bob & Thuong didn’t seem to be feeling all that well.  When it came time to eat, Bob got his bowl, grabbed my hand and motioned for me to go to his table (the older boys all eat at a table together).  

You can see Thuong doesn't look too happy and would love to have someone 'feed' him, right??

Hopefully he's not thinking - hey, why doesn't she feed me?

I went along and although I know he can (and does) feed himself, I ‘babied’ him and fed him his food.  (Hopefully he will graciously go back to feeding himself when I’m gone.)  As it turned out I would sit between Bob & Thuong and spoon one mouthful into one of their mouths and then one into the other.  For some reason Thuong started “knocking” under the table and I would pretend I thought someone was coming to visit and say, “hello, who’s there?” and they both would giggle.  Sometimes I would look under the table to try and figure out who might be there and they would think that was funny too (apparently almost 60 year old American women can be quite funny rather easily over here!)  J  Sadly the biggest laughs I got out of them was when instead of saying “hello”, I tried to say “hello” in Vietnamese.  Obviously I must have come ‘close enough’ that they knew what I was trying to do, but I was probably butchering the pronounciation enough that they found it hysterical.  

I don't remember seeing this boy in the blue shirt before, but he always was smiling and wanted hugs too!!

Here he is with a big smile on his face!!

Hey, I have three goals when I come over here – share love, share hugs, share laughs.  The first two are easy, it is always interesting to see how the third shows up!  (one year I somehow fell off the little red plastic chairs we sit on when feeding the kids.  I was feeding Kap at the time and he thought it was so funny that he kept trying to kick my chair after that to see a repeat performance.  One year I got a girl to laugh – who I had never seen laugh – when I fell over trying to put on my sneakers and last year I remember ‘knowing’ Bob wanted me to lay on the floor and pretend I was sleeping (who knows how I knew this), but then he would kick me to wake me up but blame it on Wullie (Julie’s friend who came to visit us from Cambodia) and would crack up when I would wave my finger at Wullie for bothering me.)