Dear readers,
A warm welcome to my first blog post! I can hardly believe I’ve already been here in Salt for two months. So much has happened already, and I’m looking forward to telling you a bit about my life here in Jordan. Today’s blog post will focus on our daily life at the boarding house. If you’d like to find out more about our arrival, do feel free to pop over to Margarete’s blog. As we’re all here in Salt in the same place and are therefore experiencing similar things, we’ll be dividing up the topics a little.
On just the third day of our stay here, our work at the boarding house began, which was a bit overwhelming at first. At the same time, however, this made it easier to settle into the daily routine and we were able to make our first contacts quickly.
The children from the boarding school are divided into four groups: the little boys (aged 4 to 9) and all the girls, the middle-aged boys (aged 10 to 14), the older boys (aged 15 to 19), and the deaf-blind girls and boys. Margarete and I mostly work with the little boys and girls, though at different times. We also each spend one day a week with the deafblind children. We will report on our work there in a later blog post.
As the children here have school until the afternoon, Margarete and I usually start work at 4 pm. After school, everyone goes outside first. During this time, we supervise the children alongside other carers as they play independently, try to resolve conflicts (which is often challenging given our still limited language skills), push the younger children on the swings or play together. Particularly popular games are dodgeball, hide and seek, football, skipping, hopscotch and car races with the funniest pedal cars I’ve ever seen! Dinner is then served at 6 pm. Before and after the meal, there is always a prayer in sign language, led by one of the children. Until mid-October, we would then go outside for another half an hour. Now, however, it gets dark as early as 6.30 pm, which is why we go inside straight after dinner. There, we help the younger children brush their teeth and get changed. We then spend the evenings playing with Lego, doing jigsaw puzzles or watching Cartoon Network. Tom and Jerry, in particular, is always very popular with the children! At eight o’clock it’s bedtime for the little ones, whilst the older girls watch a bit more TV. By ten at the latest, everyone is in bed and our shift is over.
Our other shift starts at midnight and ends at 8 am. That was a bit of a shock for me at first, because I didn’t know if I could cope with such a chaotic sleep pattern. Fortunately, though, it’s working out better than expected, because with crocheting, watching films, reading and picking out clothes for the children, time passes more quickly than I’d initially thought, and the tiredness isn’t too bad either. However, it is a bit boring, as my main task during this time is to stay awake so that I’m available for the children in an emergency. But the boredom is over by 6 at the latest, because then it’s time to wake the children up, brush their teeth, get them dressed, comb their hair and put perfume on them. Mornings are always very hectic, as some children don’t like getting up or aren’t happy with the clothes I’ve picked out for them. This can be very challenging at times, especially as my sign language isn’t yet good enough to have a proper discussion and I now do this shift on my own. Fortunately, there are always carers next door with the deafblind children whom I can ask for help, and the older girls also help me if there are any problems. If everything goes smoothly, we head outside punctually at 7 am – provided it isn’t too cold – where the children play in the playground for a while until breakfast at 7.30 am.
The weekend here at the Holy Land Institute (HLID) isn’t Friday and Saturday as is usual in Jordan, but Friday and Sunday. As it wouldn’t be worth the children’s while to travel home for just one day, they stay here over the weekend. That’s why Margarete and I also work at the weekend, because the children need to be looked after all day. On these days, we work from 8 am to 4 pm. The mornings are organised in a very varied way. We often take the children to the gym or play outside. From 9 am, the older children also go inside to study. Sometimes we do some art, and last Friday a karate and kickboxing club came along to teach the children the basics, which they thought was pretty cool! Lunch is served at 12.30 pm. Afterwards, we go outside again and play for a bit in the playground. On Fridays, in the early afternoon, we take the children to a small shop near the HLID, dressed in high-visibility vests that are far too big for them and carrying stop signs, to buy snacks. We head back indoors as early as 3 pm, as it’s time for showers. We then spend the rest of the afternoon playing indoors, building Duplo pyramids, doing jigsaw puzzles or having mini workouts.
As we work at the weekend, we have one weekday off, which we often use to explore Salt. It’s really great fun, as Salt is a truly beautiful city, and we can easily reach the historic city centre on foot.
What’s more, the children go home for four days at the end of every month, which means we have a long weekend every month. We use this time to explore Jordan a bit and have already visited Amman and Madaba together with Julia and Carolin.
I’ve now settled in well to daily life and work here and feel really at home. The atmosphere here is very friendly and it’s always lovely to see how the children look after one another. I’m really looking forward to the next eight months and am excited to see what else lies ahead.
Best wishes and see you next time!
This text was automatically translated using an AI-powered translation system.
