Haven't you ever seen the squeakuel?!?!?!

Our last day in Bulgaria was probably one of my favorites. My friends and I all had a Semester at Sea trip to a local orphanage. We got breakfast and headed out to the buses pretty early. We could choose between a handicapped orphanage, an infant orphanage, and a 3-7 year old orphanage. We decided on the 3-7 year old orphanage because the toys we brought were for this age group, and we really wanted to be able to play with the kids. We took a bus there, and it wasn’t too far from our port. We learned about how the orphanage worked and met the lady who started it all. She didn’t speak any English, but we had a translator with us. The translator looked exactly like Stanford from Sex and the City, but Candice thought he looked like someone in Alvin and the Chipmunks. She was really upset that I hadn't see the squeakuel (hence the title of this blog).

The orphanage is a tool to help parents learn how to take care of their kids that can’t. A lot of the kids get dropped off on Mondays and get picked back up by their parents on Fridays because the parents cannot afford to take care of the kids during the whole week. Some of the kids are there all the time if they come from homes of domestic violence or something like that, but the main goal of the orphanage is to help the households to be able to take care of the kids full time. For the other children, foster parents are usually the answer. There has been an increase in the number of foster parents volunteers because of people being out of work, so a lot of the kids have gotten foster parents. Yet, a new problem that has come up is the state is decreasing the funding for these kinds of places. A bunch of orphanages in the area have been shut down by the state in the past 5 years, and the woman running the one we visited is trying to fight that.

Another aspect of the orphanage we visited is that they have a “family home”. It is out in the back of the orphanage, but it is supposed to be a step closer to a real family home. Since most of these kids don’t know what it is like to live in a stable home, they are taught to do chores, share a room, have dinner as a family, and other things. It helps them to know what an appropriate home setting is. We got to see the inside of the actual orphanage and the family home. The family home is just like any other home, but the orphanage is adorable. The bathroom has short little sinks, miniature bathroom stalls, and little kid robes! There are two rooms for sleeping. The orphanage can house 60 kids, but they only have 30 right now because they want to make sure they can give proper care to the kids that are there. 60 kids would just be too many to handle.
And these kids were a hand full! After our tour, we were allowed to play outback with them. It was amazing how they interacted. We brought toys and other fun stuff for them to have, and some of the kids were real bullies. A few of the kids horded all the stuff to themselves and some of them were taking stuff from other kids. You could definitely see who the bullies were. But most of the kids were really great. There was this one adorable little girl named Sevi, and she was dressed in all yellow. She had the cutest little cheeks, and I had a lot of fun playing with her. But, my all-time favorite was this scrawny, quiet little boy. I don’t know his name, but he had this cute little baseball cap on and a little girl tank top. All of the kids were fascinated with our cameras and some play-doh that someone brought, but this little boy LOVED my camera. He kept putting the lens of the camera in his eye and taking a picture! I have a ton of pictures of him, and he was sitting in my lap like a little angel. Some of the bully kids kept coming over and trying to steal the camera, but I always defended him. He was the best. So was Sevi though. One of the bullies, who tended to be the older kids obviously, ripped this little clapper which was the only toy she had, out of her hands. She started to cry, so I wrestled it out of the older boy’s hands and gave it back. It is hard to understand what life they have lived, but a lot of these kids have had no discipline whatsoever.

We got to play with them for a while, and the translator had brought cookies too. Watching these kids eat cookies was probably the funniest thing ever. There was a kid there that my friends and I called Augustus Gloop because that is exactly who he looked like. He was SHOVING cookies in his mouth. He wasn’t the only one though. It was so funny. I mean they clearly don’t get a lot of cookies, but it was really entertaining to watch. There was also this really bratty girl that was attached to Megan’s hip. She was still pretty cute though. I have a video of her whining into the camera. It is amazing that no matter where you go, kids are kids.

After about two hours, we left. It was a really good experience to see the orphanage and how these kids live. I will honestly never forget that little boy. After that, we had lunch on the ship and went to McDonalds to use the internet. I got to upload my pictures from Italy but didn’t have time to do much else! So, onward to Turkey which I am super excited for. We are currently sitting in the Black Sea because it only takes a couple hours to get to Istanbul, and we have to stick to the schedule! Lame sauce! It is Candice’s birthday today though, so we ordered a cake! Yah!