Getting more than we give

Two of us were up early. September is off to Bucharest and Lori got up to tag along and try to help. Dan arrived at the planned time of 6:20 a.m. and we were off to the train station in the rain, which of course created big puddles to avoid, both in the car and by foot. Dan bought September’s ticket and then we waited about ten minutes. The announcement came for which peron (“platform” in English, but peron is also shared in Polish and maybe a few other languages, for this is one word used also by the Netherlands railroad) the train would arrive and we went outside.  Dan helped September get her luggage up into the train and then he and Lori went back to car and then the hotel.

Our team of three joined for breakfast and then held our morning meeting with Dan was usual. We made plans for our trip to Bucharest tomorrow morning.  Corey and Laura were then quickly off to the hospital for their morning work there. Lori was off to the school as usual. Today she had the students do “What do you hear?” She created this exercise, listening for numbers given orally, after some students the day before had expressed astonishment when they thought she was asking them to find fifty objects within an I Spy puzzle, whereas she was really asking for fifteen. Then she also used the homophones “ate/eight” and “to/too/two” and asked them to identify the number word. Neither the morning nor afternoon students could do the “to/too/two” group with accuracy. Perhaps they have not been exposed to the numbers as written words. They could easily do “ate/eight” correctly because they knew “ate” had something to do with “eat.” As usual the second hour consisted of games such as Jingo and Hangman.

Corey and Laura reported they had another good day at the hospital with the children. Again, there were not a lot at the tears when leaving for these two volunteers are determined also to come back and work with these precious children.

Mihaela and Delia joined us for our evening meal. Mihaela graciously thanked us for our service. Most often, as will with this group of volunteers, we feel we get more than we give.

Entry submitted by: Lori