Learning to Set Boundaries and Manage my Time

Day 3--
Today was a little bit more of a challenging day for me. I'm still working on coming out of my shell completely and am learning how to set boundaries, not for the adults, but for the kids.

To start the day, I learned a valuable lesson about my malaria pills. My pills require me to eat along with taking them. I decided to take my pill this morning before breakfast, thinking that soon enough, the food would settle in and I wouldn't have to worry. Needless to say, about halfway through breakfast, I thought I was going to lose it on the dining room table! I made it through and learned my lesson for next time. Step 1--eat breakfast. Step 2--take malaria pills.

Today, I had to learn to start setting better boundaries for myself today, not with the adults, but with the kids. I have LOVED the kids and hanging with them has been an absolute joy, but I definitely have to be careful with having my own space and the "what's yours is mine" rule seems to be applied generously. I want to share what I have brought, but I also want to be careful that it's not messed up before this school is started. So, I've tried to set some boundaries today, but it went alright. We'll see how tomorrow goes!

I'm also learning that it's really easy to just get caught in a day where I don't do much but play with the kids (which is totally fun, but I'm definitely feeling the burn to get started on things). I think that whatever we end up doing tomorrow, I'm just going to have to pack up my computer and assessments and take them with me so that I can get some stuff for the school done during the day.

It was good this morning though to spend a little time with a newcomer to The Freedom Center, DK. DK was recently rescued (on Father's Day) and was brought to the Freedom Center with no previous education (he's 10). He is so hungry for learning and this morning, we sat down to work on the the alphabet. What started as a small project, turned into an hour long letter writing lesson. I had written out all the letters of the alphabet on a chalkboard, and for him, not being familiar with the letters, it was more like drawing foreign objects than writing letters. He worked so hard and he was so pleased with himself when he was able to make a letter correctly. When he didn't, he'd erase and erase until he got it right. What a sweet boy!

Since I've struggled for a couple of days to upload videos of anything that's going on (the internet is a little slow here), I'm going to try to post pics online. I'm still struggling to post anything else on this blog, so keep updated on facebook and hopefully you'll see some stuff uploading on there soon!