Our first day as volunteers! The Madre Teresa day care is located in a bad neighborhood called Uruguaia and the van driver wouldn’t let us out of the van until the nuns opened the doors for us. Madre Teresa caters for poor children, some of whom actually sleep there throughout the week, and it also houses a few abandoned elderly women. The nuns speak some English which helps for communication but all the local volunteers only speak Portuguese. Cindy, one of the 9 volunteers and I started at the day care, and without any instructions we got to work. There were about 15 kids, one nun and another worker and we soon realized that the nuns have a pretty good routine with the kids. Their daily routine is breakfast, play time, wash their hands, lunch, sit on the potty until they poop, bath followed by a nap. The kids are between 1 and 3 years old and are all very cute, some of them just want to be hugged others want to play or just get one’s attention. However, you can see that they don’t get the best care at home as some of them have skin rashes or scars. Some of them have a sad look on their face and I wonder what their home life is like, maybe it’s better not to know. It was a bit overwhelming to see the kids but it is so rewarding to see them smile.
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