"waka waka. eh eh."

lately i haven't been able to get the girls at the orphanage off my mind. it seems like anything and everything reminds me of them.

on this trip, i had a closer relationship to the girls than any of my other trips. i feel like it always takes the kids a week to warm up to you; that's why i was so excited we were able to have such a long time with them this time! and since my last trip was only a few months ago, it didn't take quite as long for them to warm up!

i remember the night that they finally let julie and i in completely. it was the night of sarah's birthday. [i already wrote a little about it in my last blog post.]

we were all playing the "my name is.." game. we were having so much fun; we must have played for an hour or so. then we slowly started moving towards the house so we could leave, but we didn't want to go! we ended up playing with the girls on the driveway for another hour, at least! then, not sure how it switched to this, we started singing different songs with the girls. it would just be bits and pieces of different songs. julie and i would sing a little bit to see if they girls knew it or not, then they would sing a little bit of another song to see if we knew it. we were mainly singing disney songs or hannah montana. there was a little bit of beyonce or rihanna mixed in too. the girls just loooved it when we knew the same songs. and it was so cool because that was one thing that the language barrier couldn't interfere with. music is the same wherever you are. i think that's what helped bring us all together.

then it slowly moved from singing to dancing, and by this time it was started to get dark. so dina, matilda, and ruth were on a mission to teach me how to dance. [which is pretty difficult for me anyways] they decided "waka waka" would be the best to teach me! so sure enough, after about fifteen minutes of diligent teaching and a LOT of laughing, i knew how to dance to the chorus of "waka waka"! the girls LOVED it. i'm not sure if they were laughing because they were so exicted i'd learned it or if they were laughing at my dance skills. [i'm leaning towards the latter...] but either way, it brought our relationship to a whole different level.

they also taught me how to dance to a different song, i think it was shakira as well. all i know is it went, "oh boy. i can see your body mooooving." hahahha. man, they were like rolling on the floor watching me try to dance to that. it's just amazing to me how much fun we can have together and how much we can understand about each other even without speaking the same language. God is so awesome.

what's even cooler, is that throughout this entire time, one of the girls was videotaping. it was dark so you can't really see anything, but all you need is the sound to understand how much fun we were having together. it was so awesome to go home and realize all of that was captured on video rather than just my memory. so whenever i miss those girls and those times we had together, i can still close my eyes and imagine i'm still there with them.

after that night, the girls couldn't get enough of us. we were like attached at the hip! we had new games and new experiences with the girls everyday! they were so much more interested in talking with us than before! it seemed like before that night, the girls would talk to us in creole, knowing that we wouldn't understand most of what they said and really not caring that we didn't understand. but then they changed. they started saying things using the creole they knew we knew and helping us to understand what they were saying! they started asking us about our lives at home; about boyfriends [the nonexistent ones julie and i have], about where we live, if julie and i share a room, anything they could think of! it was so cool knowing that they finally let us in enough that they cared about us!

then i had a pretty funny conversation with ruth, who i became very close to over the course of my trip. she started asking me if i was going to cry when i left and i said yes of course and that i didn't want to leave. ruth, being the goofy, beautiful girl she is said, "well, if you don't want to leave then don't." and i laughed and told her that i had to finished school before i could stay here for good. i told her i would be coming back next summer and i would stay for the whole summer. and what did she say? "i'll believe it when i see it." that comment made me laugh because of how wise such a young girl is, but it also made me really sad. i mean, these kids see people on mission teams come and go. i'm sure many of them promising kids things they can't always keep. it broke my heart to think that ruth would even wonder if i was telling the truth or not, but what else can she do? this is her life, watching people come, play, love, and leave. she hasn't been shown any other way to think about people traveling to haiti.

but i told her to just wait and see. i'll be back for good soon enough. and i can't wait till she sees that i wasn't lying.