sea day evening. Am I homesick or just sick?

January 6, 2013
I think I’m really homesick for the first time. It might be because I’m kind of sick and now have no voice. But whichever it is, I still want Mom to be here to help me get better. Not having a voice and trying to get some hyper 3-7 year olds to do the scheduled activities is definitely not good. I had hardly any luck after the third kid got to Club HAL tonight. The first two that got there were great, when I kind of hoarsely whispered that I couldn’t really talk, they paid attention to me as we played a game in free time, and they were very quiet (apparently losing your voice means you have more sensitive hearing as well, who knew?). When the 7-year-old arrived though things took a turn for the worse. I had to keep trying to talk loudly to get them to stop climbing on the bucket, to actually focus on an activity, to sit down and do anything at all rather than run around the room.

Anna came in at one point and was going through the cabinets, which didn’t help me feel at all in control of the room. As I was getting supplies from a cabinet, one of the kids jumped up on the bucket to climb and she told him to get down, then told me off for letting him climb. The boy ended up hiding under one of the tables crying for about 15 minutes before I managed to coax him out and make an alien headband with the rest of us. I kind of wanted to join him and hide for a minute as well to be honest. The night went somewhat smoothly after that. I really think I still need to be trained in working with the little ones. I’ve worked with them at camps yes, but that was pretty much babysitting and letting them play with whatever they want; here, there’s a schedule to try to keep to and I’m not sure how to get the kids wanting to do, well, ANYTHING, on the schedule. Every time I ask or say we’re going to do something, they all suggest 20 other things to do instead; none of them want to do the activity no matter how hard I try to make it seem fun. It was a long night trying to keep any of them focused on alien night which Anna made sure to tell me to center everything around. Instead they wanted a “wizard of oz” night, a “monsters” night, a ‘zombie’ night and a variety of other themes.

I went to the OB to meet Linda, the light tech (I actually met her on the Oosterdam and became friends with her here) but she wasn’t there, so I grabbed a Sprite and came back to the room to sleep. Anna rearranged the schedule for tomorrow. We’re combining the ages and I’m working afternoon shift instead of both; it’ll be pretty easy since 2-4 is scheduled as movie time! I want to go to breakfast, but I’m not entirely sure if I’ll make it if I don’t have to be at work until 1. Although, with this charter, they’ve been told to leave breakfast stuff (yogurt, cereal, milk) out through lunch, so I’m happy about that!