Days 1 & 2

It’s been 60 hours since we landed at the airport.   We have moved from extreme highs to lows, and feelings have continued to move in both of those directions.  Our mission has changed frequently with each orphanage we’ve visited.  But all have reminded us of how we were definitely being called to this country for a reason.

Our first stop after dropping off luggage at the hotel Monday morning was to an orphanage run by an American family.  They have raised children for 12 years, with some “children”still living there as university students or full time employees in the area.  The 17 children spoke excellent English, which was a gift to us that we probably undervalued at the time.There was serious competition in card games, basketball and volleyball games, and we even helped to prepare lunch with the kids on lunch duty!  The children were very healthy and seemed so happy being raised in a family environment.  We look forward to going back later in the week and spending more time with them!

                          

We had dinner enjoying typical Kyrgyzstan dishes — plov, manty, and shashleik (look those up)!  The food is very flavorful — heavy on the meats and carbs but delicious!   We crashed after returning to the hotel—it had been MANY hours since we had slept in a bed!

Early mornings have been our routine so we left for the first orphanage of the day by 8 am.  The first stop was a special needs orphanage run by the government.  There were almost 100 children there, with a range of needs.  Many children had cerebral palsy and some extremely severe.  Several of us helped feed the children either breakfast or lunch, which could take up to 1 hour per child to feed.  It was very humbling to be able to hold them and love on them, and  it was very emotionally challenging.  The nannies in the orphanage were so loving and wanting to learn how to take care of the children better.  Mariah moved bed to bed with them to discuss ways to better support the children and assist them in moving to their abilities while Ashlyn serenaded them with soothing guitar music.  Kanhka and Olivia did medical assessments on some children with unknown histories and were able to arrange for additional testing where needed.

After having lunch on the way, we moved on to another governmental orphanage with more typical children, but several of them also were categorized as special needs.  We broke up into 3 groups, dealing with 1-3 year olds, 4-5, and 6-7 year olds, playing games with toys we brought them while the medical team was assessing needs for certain children.  We were not allowed to do any photography at this orphanage, but know that it was clean and the children were being taken care of.

We were super brave for Tuesday dinner and ventured to dinner on foot and with no translator!  We’ve been eating most meals family style so we’ve had the chance to try many different things. Here’s the highlight from this meal!

We all crashed after a small gelato on the walk back to the hotel. It was nice to end the day on a happy note after lots of emotions during the day!  3rd day post will be up soon. ☺️

- Marlene Carter