Working with children

After volunteering at a nursery for the first time ever last weekend, I was quite certain that I will never be good with kids. Err, at least kids that are not my own.

I had a hard time blending in with them, especially because they only spoke Japanese and my Japanese ability just wasn't (isn't) quite there yet. I made myself useful only by taking care of this little baby girl, whom was about 1 year and 2 months old. She was really cute, but since she was so young, she wasn't very verbal - which I guess worked out well for me. Although all the volunteers were really nice, and spoke English, I felt kind of out of place at times because I didn't know how to socialize with the kids. However, I left with the intention of coming back the following week, because committment is a committment.

Yesterday morning, I got up and ready to go, perhaps a little reluctantly, but I did it anyways. I showed up at the nursery, and Noriko-san (fellow volunteer) and her two kids were there already. Noriko-san prepared drawing papers and crayons for the kids, so we started drawing while waiting for the other kids to come. I was able to join in, probably thanks to one of the other volunteers (a girl around my age), and we just sort of drew random things together. At one point, Noriko-san's two years old son was palm-to-palm play-pushing me. He was so cute! Of course he didn't have enough strength to push me over. /laughs/ When his older brother saw this, he wanted to try too. He was 5 years older, at 7 years old, and MUCH MUCH stronger. Basically I was on my knees while he pushed me and he could actually push hard enough that I have to keep backing up. Of course if I had a better stand he wouldn't be able to do so, but of course it didn't matter. After this little pushing game, he started to warm up to me, and throughout the rest of the day, he would make me play with him. Although it was really tiring to play with a genki 7-year old boy, it was a lot of fun and I felt like I could blend in much better than last week!

One of the kids brought in a banana for snack time. Noriko-san joked about David being a banana. He didn't get it at first, but then I explained that he was "yellow (asian) outside, white inside." He laughed. It's interesting because Chinese people have the same concept when describing CBC. This time, David-san was taking care of a 1 year old boy named Hibiki. He was so cute, and he loved David /laughs/. David was carrying him around all the time and we called him papa-san. This time was David's last and I felt a little sad because he was the only other person around that didn't know fluent Japanese. However, I get along pretty well with everybody else so it should be fine.

After this week's volunteering, I changed my mind about kids. They're alright really :)

Oh, and I did my nails! :)
cake themed - and it miraculously matched my new table mat /laughs/