Day 2 (tuesday): Kids, cleaning and more kids!
I woke up tired. Yesterday was quite a busy day, so I hope I can take it easy today. I also found an old notebook in my bag yesterday evening, so that means that, if I get bored, I can at least doodle a bit.
I got dressed, ate breakfast and went on my 5 minute walk.
I arrived exactly at 8:30 at the reception. I got my keys and transceiver, then went to the meeting room to say hello to everyone and meet some new people. There I heard that I would be helping at the crèche today, which would open at 9:15 o’clock. I thought it would be fun, since I really like children.
Once the meeting ended, I went to the crèche. No one seemed to be there, except for a woman. She told me that she works there, that she set the whole crèche up and that she was glad someone finally showed up to help her. I could see the disapointment in her eyes when I told her that it was a one time thing, but she was happy that she could have my help at least for today. We waited for like 3/4th of an hour, before finally a mother showed up with her child. It was a little girl, who seemed to be very shy. Her mother left, and we tried playing with her. At first she liked it: all the attention was on her. But she got more and more bored, since there were no other children to play with. We tried everything: cooking with the toy stove (the girl could say “banana”, and she wasn’t afraid to show that), coloring in the colouring books (I ended up liking it more than the child, I coloured a dolphin!) and we even let her go outside on the tricycle. When I was about to give up trying to entertain her, another kid showed up along with his brother. Although the brother was actually too old for the crèche (he was 7, while the crèche was for children aged 2 to 4), he could stay a while to keep the two other children company.
Then more children arrived: two girls and two boys. One of the boys was too old as well (he was 5 years old), but he was the friend of the other older boy, so the woman told them that they had to leave if they got too wild or too rough (which they eventually did. They had to leave immediately).
The more children arrived, the more fun it got. Some of the kids were playing with toy cars, others were colouring (one even started drawing on me!), and two girls were fighting over a doll.
The last one made me a bit sad: the woman said that they were fighting over the doll because there was only one. There were a lot of toys for boys, but only a few for the girls.
Some of the drawings the children made on my hands.
After a while, some parents came to pick up their children. Yet not every parent did so, so we all went to the hallway where all the rooms were where the refugees stayed. There one of the refugees offered to bring the kids back home. We happily obliged, then went back to the crèche to clean up. In total, I stayed at the crèche until 12:00 o’clock. Then a quick walk through the hallways of the AZC to check if there weren’t any lost children from the crèche there, which there weren’t.
Then I went to the meeting room for lunch and another ‘overdracht’. Then everyone went back to their desks, and I got out my notebook and doodled a bit. I know, not the best or the most productive thing to do, but I didn’t really feel like doing anything else. Then one of the people in the rooms offered to take a walk through the AZC (the same staff member as yesterday), and I walked alongside her. No cute kids offering ice cream this time, unfortunately, but it was still fun to do something else than sitting there and drawing in my notebook.
Once we came back, we heard that there were two rooms that needed cleaning: two refugees had left the AZC, and they might have left some of their stuff in the rooms by accident. So we got some trashbags and rubber gloves, then went to the rooms. The first room was locked and no one was inside, so we couldn’t ask someone which locker and bed belonged to the refugee that had already left. The second room, however, did have someone inside, so we asked him which locker and bed belonged to the refugee that was gone, and we cleaned up his locker and around his bed. We actually had to break open a padlock before we could open the locker, but we managed. There were a few things that seemed like it could be useful, so we went to ask some other staff members. They concluded that they wouldn’t be able to use it, so we threw everything in the trash.
Then we went back to that room to get all of the stuff from COA (such as the bedsheets), then took it to the cleaning room.
Then I was sitting at the desk again, drawing in my small notebook until it was about 4 o’clock. The last half an hour I spend in the recreation room, playing table football and shuffleboard with some kids and two staff members. I may have gotten a bit too competitive with the football, because I could hear myself swearing under my breath. I just hope the kids didn’t pick any of that up (although I think I did hear one of them say a swearword as well... whoops!)
Then I went home. I was tired, but happy. I like working with children, and I did that a lot today.!
In the evening, I watched some series and made a blogpost from what happened yesterday. Afterwards I was too tired to think of questions to ask for the interview. I hope the questions from the example interview will do, because I can’t really think of any others right now.
I liked this day more than yesterday. Although taking a notebook with me was a good idea, I should’ve thought of questions instead of just making random drawings in my notebook.
My next goal is to get the interview done. It has become more of a burden now, and the longer I wait, the heavier that burden will feel.
Have a nice (rest of your) day!
