June 22, 2010

Today was absolutely incredible, even though the kids still have a lot of learning to do, and I was incredibly tired. The kids calmed down quicker today when we kept doing the same signals and stuff we did yesterday to calm them down. We didn’t raise our voices, and we just kept repeating the same things over and over again until they would stop talking and be able to hear us. Which took a while, but definitely not as long as yesterday. We did silent fox, which is putting the middle and ring finger on your thumb to make a fox looking thing, and then we raise our hands when we want them to drop what they’re doing and come sit quietly at the table. They did so so much better today, and I’m very optimistic that every day they will improve more and more. Snack times went way way better also, which was nice, so at the end of each snack and meal we didn’t have food thrown throughout the room and like hanging from everything. Although I liked the food they served yesterday much much better. We went to the pool today, which we only do on Tuesday and Wednesday. That was very interesting. The kids were all insane, and they were super hard to keep track of, and they kept running away and going where they aren’t supposed to. We had two little kids puke, two pee their pants, one go missing (she ran away to the kiddie pool when we were supposed to leave), and many, many criers. These kids are CRAZY! And Nikolas again, (I learned how to spell his name today!) was just ridiculous with the things he was whining about. Even when he is talking normally it sounds like he is whining by the way he drags words out. “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee don’t wanna color.” Then sit down. “Buuuuuuut I wanna draw a picture” That’s what we’re doing. “Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut iiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee don’t wanna do dat. Iiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee wanna, wanna color a picture iiiiinnnn.” Ah! There is no reasoning with him. And his thing today was that he says “Aweeeee” with a really sad face everytime we tell him to do or not to do something. It is just freaking adorable, and I can barely stand it. If it was morally ok to kidnap kids, I would definitely kidnap him. Or adopt him, whatever. He is so freaking cute. He is definitely my little buddy and holds my hand everywhere I go. I love him most of all the kids, even though I’m pretty sure the other counselors think he is an evil little child. Which I’m not exactly arguing with. Today during art was really interesting. The supplies still hadn’t been gotten, which was kind of annoying, cuz I was stuck making up stuff to do. The poor director and coordinator in my group though. I can’t even imagine how frustrating this all must have been for them. But yeah. w/e. Today after camp six of us went to see the new Karate Kid movie, which was sick! Disney did suuuuuch a good job remaking it! Can’t even begin to tell how much I got into that movie and enjoyed it. SOOOO tired! Hope tomorrow goes well. Although it was kind of cool getting to use the bag of tricks (which is fun stuff like madlibs, coloring stuff, puzzle, cards, etc.) for the kids to do since like four of my little guys didn’t bring swim suits. And that meant I didn’t have to get in the water woot! Although I know I will in the future. Hopefully they will let me be one of the ones that stands and observes rather than gets in. Oh well. Only two days a week. Oh, and before I forget, even though I have not been yelling or anything with these kids, I can’t believe how much my voice is going out. I have to be super careful cuz I really don’t wanna recover from losing my voice! Its just so much talking to these kids from eight in the morning til five at night. It adds up! I have heard from my teachers in music at Wazzu that teachers often lose their voice and have trouble with that kind of stuff, and now I understand why. I am trying to raise the pitch of my speaking voice to make it healthier, although it feels like I am a talking Disney character when I do it. But I guess most people’s voices in our culture are lower than they are naturally supposed to be. Unhealthy. We’ll see how this goes in the coming days. Til tomorrow! Night!