First day of work

September 8, 2003

Hiya,

Well, today was the first day of work. It went well. Thank goodness Mondays are short days b/c I am super tired. I think I’m going to take a nap!The kids I worked with today were all under 3 years old. I didn’t have change any diapers today, though, but I will tomorrow. (the other volunteer and I will take turns).

I unpacked last night. I’m so proud of myself, everything is put away. Usually, I live out of a suitcase for awhile. It actually looks like someone lives there, too, b/c I put a few things on the wall and on my door. I should’ve brought more for the wall, but I packed in such a hurry.

 

This one baby, Kieran, was just the absolute cutest! He is such a good baby. So happy and eats well,
and even took a nap.

I had my first go at trying to learn how to drive the stick minibus. We went to a Tesco (grocery store) parking lot. I was just learning how to change gears. Finally, when I accelerated too much after switching gears and having the van switch off, I said, “Enough!” and made motions with my arms to accentuate the point and then Sharon (the lead child care worker – paid staff) got back in the driver’s seat. It wasn’t weird with being on the other side or anything, (though I wasn’t out on the street yet!) it was those darn gears. It is quite a small parking lot and mostly I was just going around in circles and couldn’t really get out of first gear.

You know how people will ask you if you slept well? Well, my roommate asked me that this morning and I think it’s like one of those things where you’re supposed to just say “yes”, the way you’re supposed to say “fine” when someone asks how you are, but I was honest. “No, not at all.” I said the same when John (a paid worker) asked me. Well, they did ask – I’m not going to lie. I woke up at like 3:30 in the morning after having the weirdest nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep until 5:00. Luckily, we live right next to the place where we work, so I got up at 8:30 to be there at 9:00.

When we were driving to pick up the mummies, I saw some of the murals I’ve heard about in Belfast. There was also grafitti saying “F*CK IRA” and so on. The mummies all live in housing estates, which is like the projects, or low income housing. There are some kids who are a bit big to be in diapers as well, and one should definitely be crawling, but he just kept rolling over, it looked really weird.

I’m really anxious to learn how to drive, so I can get the heck off this mountain. It’s just us and some cows and dogs up here. I really am not in the frame of mind to walk that far right now, but hopefully, soon. Well, at least by Friday, b/c I’m meeting one of my friends in town to celebrate his birthday. Also, we don’t get out of work until 7 or 7:30 on T, W, Th, and most things are closed by then anyways.

Well, I think I’m gonna take that nap I was talking about now. Hope everyone is doing well.

Love you bunches,

Sabrina J