This morning, I answered a plea for help at Conversation, the women's Bible Study at church. They needed help with child-care and, since my Monday mornings are free and they clearly needed help, I headed into St. Andrews. I got to work with Carrie and Catie, one of the Youth Workers and the Children's Worker, respectively, and the children were just darling. We had the whole front room of the church to play in and here were so many little toy stations. We had about fifteen kids in the end and I spent my time with certain kids. The first twenty minutes (not even joking) were spent with Daisy, Bo and Abby playing with the jack-in-the-box. Like I"m not going to have nightmares after that but they loved it so I complied. Later, we had an epic dress-up session. I got to dress Abby in a pink skirt and matching pink boat and tried to convince her to wear pretty much every hat we had in the box but she did not agree. Daisy wanted to dress up as a clown and so we all joined her and wore crazy colored hair wigs. The kids absolutely loved it and that turned into a little bit of tickle time. One of the little boys, Caleb, actually was at the museum the previous week with his mum and three siblings and it was so much fun to actually get to play with him. I had been watching him the whole time he was at the museum on Thursday since he was so absolutely adorable! After snack time and reading some stories, we played with the parachute, which I haven't done since we had a lawn at Voyagers (or maybe that was just the Earth Ball... in that case, I haven't played with a parachute since I was maybe in 5th grade). We played tent and cat and mouse and popcorn and the kids literally were shrieking with glee. Later, Bo and I worked on a puzzle and one of the little girls ( can't remember her name) and I did a farm animal puzzle and went through the sounds of all the animals. I had such a blast with the kids- its' been honestly forever since I've been around little kids (other than a few days with Zach) or hanging out with the Wright kids for an afternoon, and it was such a blessing. I had so much fun with them and I cannot wait until next week.
That afternoon, I had a totally different experience. I had my last Monday HW Club session and worked with the little girls who waved me over like crazy-people the second I walked into the room. I saw with Nasra, Khartoun, Rakia and the last little girl whose name I can't seem to remember for the life of me right now, and we had a great afternoon. The two little ones were mostly copying out of a book since neither were great readers and I gave Rakia and Nasra a spelling test. I ended up giving them all these words that related to each other- soldier, revolution, command, terrible, finally, etc.- and after they did a pre-test and a post-test (another girl joined us for the post-test), I had them put together the words into sentences. Eventually the boys came over to our table and we ended up having a mental math test. I would give them years (".... if I was born in 1328, how old would I be?...") and they would have to try and figure out my age. One of them was incredible- such amazing mental math skills! I was so proud of him! I said goodbye to all the kids and one would not let me leave! She was asking me question a mile-a-minute: Miss... where do you live? What street is it on? When are you coming back? Is that your bus pass? Do you have one at home? Who do you live with? Are you going to bring your car and your bike back? Why don't you live in Cowley? On and on and on and on. I kept saying "one more question" and in response, she'd give me like fifteen. Even at the end, when I was finally walking down the street, she yelled after me: "Are you taking a plane to get back home?" "Yes!" "OK, bye!" Still, so glad I ended up going this afternoon (it had started to rain as I was leaving the house and really contemplated just going back) and am really so glad that I didn't end up staying home.
I really, really, really am going to miss Oxford. Really.
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