Volunteers

Over the past week we've had a few friends from America come to do some volunteer work around the city. And by a few I mean 120 of them. They were from several different churches but almost half of them were from Nashville, Tennessee. They weren't Texans, but it was nice to see some people from the South. Almost my entire study abroad group is from the Midwest and I've been realizing how many cultural differences there are, even within our own country!

The group was split up into teams and they each did a job in the morning, had some free time in the afternoon, and did another job in the evening. I wasn't able to help out in the mornings because I had class, although on Wednesday I was out early so I met my mom in the park where she was helping with the kids from the refugee center. My mom took this picture of me and a sweet little boy named Adi. He has 2 brothers and a sister and they are all adorable.



Also, on Fridays I don't have class so I went out to the Roma Gypsy camp with my dad. The gypsys (gypsies?) in this particular camp live in a very run-down "neighborhood"-type area. In some of the other camps they are just squatters that live on the land until they get kicked out and have only makeshift shacks, if anything at all. Most of them have at least some money but they choose to live in this very different culture. The children are very dirty and don't usually have very many clothes. To put it bluntly, they are very wild. The boys are especially mean to the little girls. It is a great experience to show unconditional love to a group of kids that probably aren't shown a great deal of love on a day to day basis -- at least not the way the we generally show it.

Here are a few pictures of the Americans with the gypsy kids and also a picture of one of the homes near the "field" that we were playing on.







In other news, my mom and I just booked a trip for next week and we're going to PARIS. We are leaving really early on the 23rd (which also happens to be my birthday) and coming back here on the 26th. After that I will only be here for a few more days and my plane leaves on the 29th to come back to Texas. I can't believe my time here is almost over!