The weekend

I worked my first shift by myself on Friday morning on the VVF ward. It went well. The hardest part was finding supplies. That will get easier with time. At the end of my shift I tried to take some of the patients out for some sunshine up to deck 7, but the elevator was stuck. The VVF ladies are not allowed to climb stairs because it could compromise their healing. I felt bad to let them down because they only get outside once every day, but I'm no elevator mechanic. There were already a group of patients up on deck 7, so we had to get someone to fix the elevator before they got stuck outside for hours. :) Thank goodness there are so many competent people on this ship.
Friday evening I went out with my roommates to Diana Restaurant, a Lebanese place in Monrovia. It was nice to get off the ship and experience the city. The roads are terrible! There are potholes everywhere, and pedestrians crossing constantly. It would take me quite some time to be able to drive here, because you have to be very aggressive to get anywhere! The person who gets the right of way seems to be the vehicle that can "hold out" the longest. What I mean is, if you are crossing paths with another vehicle, you just have to hope they stop before you do, and then that gives you right of way. I wonder how many accidents happen here!?
It was my friend Kyung Jin's going away party at the restaurant. It's a strange community here, because people are constantly coming and going. I only met two of my roommates a week ago, and they both leave on Monday! There are arrivals and departures every day. However, at this point in the mission, most people are here until the end of November/beginning of December.
Saturday morning I went to an orphanage with a group of people from the ship. I felt like a celebrity driving into the town where the orphanage was located. Kids popped out from everywhere waving at us with the most gigantic smiles stretched across their faces. Honestly it was quite something. I felt like the queen. When we arrived at the orphanage, one little girl named Blessing greeted me and I had a constant companion for the rest of our time there. She wanted to be held all the time and was quite fascinated with trying on my sunglasses repeatedly. I put the sunglasses away after a while because some of the kids started a little spat over who got to try them on next! They were SO adorable. Blessing reminded me of Lilo from "Lilo and Stitch." She was like a little cartoon character - so full of life and excitement about everything! I don't have any pictures of her though because Mercy Ships doesn't like us to take a lot of pictures everywhere we go, because we are not tourists, we are here to serve. That makes sense. Also, it's not a great idea to flash around our high-tech expensive equipment, because we're trying to identify with the people. Showing our wealth would probably just create barriers. I'll try to get a few pictures at appropriate times.
We played relay race games, coloured pictures, sang songs, skipped rope, and just hung out together for a couple hours. My friend Katelyn got bitten by something and her entire body flushed a deep red. It was very itchy she said, but otherwise she felt fine. She's obviously allergic to something around here. There were these tiny fire ants everywhere, and they bit hard! Maybe they were the culprits!
Last night, Katelyn, Lanita, Joanna and I had a girls night and watched some Jane Austen movies. It was a lot of fun to be girly together and sigh over Mr. Darcy. I'm such a girl.
Now I'm heading down to the cafeteria to make cards to send home! I did it last week and it was SO much fun!