A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR

It was New Year’s Eve and approaching 2pm in the afternoon.  The sun was bright and getting hotter.  I went out to close the gate that had blown open and that is when I saw the wave approaching.  It was a crowd of kids on their way to our house.  Red, blue, yellow, pink and every other color moving in the sunlight.  From the distance they appeared to be balloons bouncing up and down along the road.  I sent the white pick up to carry them the rest of the way.  As the truck came through the gate, I could hear the cheering of so many high-pitched happy voices.  In seconds they all came off the truck bed.  Shadayah helped Emily and Gregory and Justin jumped over the side.  Even little Shelton had come!  They came in all different sizes and ages and filled the yard within no time.  The girls screamed with delight as I showed them to the girls’ dorm and the boys were all muttering with not so well concealed pleasure as they claimed their beds in the boys dorm.  This was the New Year’s sleep over that the Blackman Eddy kids would talk about for months to come!

After settling into the rooms, the kids all spread out for basketball, bicycle riding, football, play kitchen and matchbox cars.  Twenty-one kids all over the place.  There was shouting, laughing, squealing and crying!  At three o’clock we broke out the ideals (Belizean ice pops) and then things got happy again.  The girls spent the afternoon and evening taking showers with the hot water and shampoo.  The boys hung out on the bunk beds and impressed me by reading books from the library!  What a bunch of kiss-ups!  At 5:oo pm we had supper.  Everyone was so excited to sit at the long table together.  They gasped with delight when I brought out the toasted bread – with cheese!  Grilled cheese for you Americans!  Some of the kids had five of them and three cups of juice!  They were thrilled.  Everyone ate till they were full and then went back to the dorms to sit on the beds and take more showers.  The younger ones sat at the picnic tables and colored.

At 6:30 we piled in the bus and went to church for the New Year’s Eve Service.  When we got home we had snacks and watched a movie.  Most of the kids decided to skip the movie and ran to the dorms to lay on the beds or take another shower!  At 11pm we all went into the dorm rooms.  I slept with 15 girls and Andrew went in with the six boys.  Something didn’t seem right with the math, but it was a lot of fun.  I shared a big bed with Shemona and Reniesha.  As we all got comfy in our beds, they asked me to tell them a story. I told them the story of the Princess and the Pea.  Half of them fell asleep but most of them were enjoying the time together.  Emily, who is six, kept getting out of bed because she just wanted to play.  Jena made sure that I knew what was going on.  They started comparing notes on who had come to my preschool.  Almost all of them had, but Emily is still at our school in Infant 2. As she was the youngest girl there it made her feel a little special!

The boys dorm was quiet until 12pm.  Then the fun started.  Raheem and Shemar were jumping from bed to bed, on the top bunks.  You can tell that it was a man chaperoning!  They took out all the toy cars and lined them up under the beds and had pillow fights.  But then it quieted down and all was asleep at Oasis Nation. Six o’clock in the morning everyone started to wake up.  Happy New Year!  And it was, we all ate pancakes with syrup in the dining room. We piled them all in the truck after one more shower for the girls and another drive around the yard on the bikes for the boys.  They waved goodbye with the most beautiful smiles.

Today I found out that they all want to know if they can come at 4 o’clock this Friday!  I think I’ll have them wait until the next team comes!

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