Saturday, March 31, 2007

We Are Up and Running!

Once again, I have to apologize for the delay in posting to everyone. Open Arms has been running live for the last two days now. We leave our hotel around 7:30 am and do not get back until late in the evening, at which time we literally drop.

The program is going very well and the Aunties and babies are very happy. It is so wonderful to see the smiles on both the babies’ and the Aunties’ faces. I thought I’d give you a little run down on how that program is running. The aunties work shifts and are assigned 3 babies in the morning and 3 different babies in the afternoon. They are divided up into age groups of 0-6 months in one shift and 7-12 months in the other shift.

They start out with doing massage therapy on the babies. From their heads down to their toes, they are given a complete body massage. This helps with their muscles, as well as giving the babies the physical touch that they need. They talk and sing to the babies while they are doing this. It is so touching to see the babies just lay there and look into their Aunties eyes while they are rubbing on them—very sweet.

They then have some music time where they sing as a group various children’s songs. The itsy bitsy spider is the Aunties favorite. After they’re done with each song, the Aunties clap and the babies just smile!! They have reading time where they not only read to the babies, but the babies are encouraged to touch and feel the books. It is wonderful to see the babies point to the pictures and interact with their Aunties. They also have free play time where they can interact with each other. This is fun to watch, especially with the older group of babies. They normally cannot get to each other in the nursery, other than reaching through their cribs. It is so much fun to watch them play together and interact. They explore touching each other’s hair, hands, etc. I think the free play time is my favorite.

They LOVE all the new toys. I think that the Aunties are enjoying the toys as much as the children are. They have never seen any of the toys before (other than the balls), so everything is new for them as well. The RN’s showed them how to work each of the toys and what the benefit each of them had for the children in their development.

I have to apologize that there are no pictures with this post, but the orphanage staff has requested that we not post pictures of the children to the internet and we have to respect this request. Director Su and Ms. Yi have been so cooperative and so helpful, and they are so excited about this program and really want it to be successful. We (ZKO) has given our word that we would abide by their wishes with this request and we cannot do anything to jeopardize this very precious relationship that we have been able to establish during this trip. We thank you for your understanding in this particular matter.

Hopefully these next few days we will be able to relax and enjoy our free time working on finding locations and maybe even squeeze in a little shopping.

Thank you for following along with us on this journey and again I am sorry that the posts have been so slow in coming.

The ZKO Team

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