It's dark
It's dark...and I wonder where the sun is all these gray days!
Here, the sun makes a very quick appearance (if any) at about 11am and then slides across the lowest angle of the sky you could imagine to disappear for another week. I am always amazed at how small a slice of the sky the sun uses here in the winter.
Kids must feel it too. Many days they are still sleeping at noon. We agreed they should wake themselves up. Now we think we should wake them up. Ah, this parenting stuff...do we push, Ok how hard? Tonite Pavel is talking in the meeting about the section of your brain that is damaged from violent video and playstation games. They could probably care less.
Orphans show very little ability to think beyond the day. Tomorrow might not come.
To teach a child to care is a difficult thing, if for 18 years they did not.
How will they make it, we wonder every day.
How can there be thousands of children like this...alive, but not alive?
Something has been sudged out of their souls.
Vanya said the other day that the color of our house was horrible. It's sunny yellow. He said it reminded him of the psychiatric hospital.
We forget about the kids at the psych hospital. We had to pick less battles. We picked 5 kids. Many days I wonder how they will ever fiind a way to hold a job, feed themselves, have a family, love someone, care about the world, care about themselves.
We have to tell them to wash their socks!
They would chose to buy a game where guys shot the crap out of each other than have food for a week. These are kids that don't care.
But sometimes they do. Like the hand carved wooden box that Kolya gave Sasha for his Germany trip savings bank. Or the New Year's dinner that Tanya made all herself.
There are flashes of hope.
But like the sun, they use a very small slice of the sky.
Here, the sun makes a very quick appearance (if any) at about 11am and then slides across the lowest angle of the sky you could imagine to disappear for another week. I am always amazed at how small a slice of the sky the sun uses here in the winter.
Kids must feel it too. Many days they are still sleeping at noon. We agreed they should wake themselves up. Now we think we should wake them up. Ah, this parenting stuff...do we push, Ok how hard? Tonite Pavel is talking in the meeting about the section of your brain that is damaged from violent video and playstation games. They could probably care less.
Orphans show very little ability to think beyond the day. Tomorrow might not come.
To teach a child to care is a difficult thing, if for 18 years they did not.
How will they make it, we wonder every day.
How can there be thousands of children like this...alive, but not alive?
Something has been sudged out of their souls.
Vanya said the other day that the color of our house was horrible. It's sunny yellow. He said it reminded him of the psychiatric hospital.
We forget about the kids at the psych hospital. We had to pick less battles. We picked 5 kids. Many days I wonder how they will ever fiind a way to hold a job, feed themselves, have a family, love someone, care about the world, care about themselves.
We have to tell them to wash their socks!
They would chose to buy a game where guys shot the crap out of each other than have food for a week. These are kids that don't care.
But sometimes they do. Like the hand carved wooden box that Kolya gave Sasha for his Germany trip savings bank. Or the New Year's dinner that Tanya made all herself.
There are flashes of hope.
But like the sun, they use a very small slice of the sky.