Tori's Stories

I sit here at my desk—my messy desk and wonder how to put my thoughts into words. Scraps of paper left over from a preschool craft I made up, coloring pages and 20 markers lye in a pile waiting to be finished for a song prop, 12 baskets from when I taught the story of the 5 loaves and 2 fish, a cookbook I used when making my portion of Thanksgiving dinner, a cup of water, Kreyol notes, a couple of baby toys, lesson idea books, a few CDs, and my computer all clutter my desk. This array of items pretty much sums up my typical life here but doesn’t even break the surface of the things that go on here. Since I’ve been here we’ve admitted six new babies. The youngest are six month old twins and the oldest is 13 months. They all came from different circumstances and are here for different reason. Our hope and the plan right now is for four of them to be reunited with a family member after three months of our care, one of them was reunited in August and is now back to stay until he is ...

Thanksgiving… It happened this week (in America at least). I feel like there is an unsaid rule about writing what you are thankful for or talking about what you are thankful for sometime around this Holiday. That isn’t too hard though, we all have so much to be thankful for. I’ll list some of mine later. Sitting here at 12:37 in the afternoon on the Friday after Thanksgiving and I sit with a thankful heart. I loved preschool this morning. The last week and a half there has been construction going on right next door to the preschool room and having only half walls, the kids easily get distracted by all the action. I’ve been frustrated by repeating myself over and over recently. I’ve been frustrated feeling like the kids are not absorbing anything. I’ve been frustrated at the fact that I was feeling like a failure as a teacher. We started out the year with actions similar to this, but with corrective discipline and daily structure we moved out of it. I didn’t want to go through...

I am now living in Lagosette, Haiti (about six miles south of Cap Haitien) at Children of the Promise (COTP). COTP is not an orphanage but a creche because they do not keep the children long term. They take in sick and/or abandoned babies and love them back to health. Their main goal is to eventually reconnect the child with family but when this is not possible they adopt them out. We have 16-20 babies 0-1, 8 special needs kids (1-5), and 30-40 kids 1-5. Our numbers are always changing. Since I’ve been here I have seen two kids be reunited with their Haitian families, two children go home to their adoptive families, and five children be admitted. This means that there is always something to do around here. There are always babies to help feed, diapers to change, hugs to give, boo-boos to kiss, kids to chase, kids to push in a swing, songs to be sung, loving to give, and attention to give. Luckily for us there is a great staff of Haitian nannies that work here and love these kids. ...