December 3 part 2

Once we got back to the orphanage we ate some & played some. Odette was very content playing and sitting with me along with just playing and doing her own thing. She asked at one point to Brian something in Creole. It was "are we going to the beach?" He say "wi". She smiled ear to ear. Later that evening the older girls were in the room and giving Gladys a hard time about her picture book she had. Girls being mean to each other transcends race, nationality, and poverty. Gladys went from being mad to being upset and hurt. After the big girls left some of Gladys pictures were on the floor- Odette went and got a picture envelope that she had gotten pictures in and took out her pictures and put Gladys pictures inside in the envelope. Odette then took the picture envelope and put them in her broken photo album and handed it to her. I was so proud!

Later I sat down with Odette on her bed with the journal Ally gave me and the English Creole Dictionary to get an idea of how much she knows. I looked up the word for "name" and asked her to write her name. Malange, who is Odette's good friend, was sitting on the bed across from us and was watching what we were doing. She understood that I was wanting Odette to write her name. Odette started to make an "O" and then looked a little lost. Malange reached over and wrote Odette's name for her and handed the journal back. Then Odette copied her name next to it. So then I thought let's see what she knows about math. So I looked up the creole for math. I saw one of the other girls school paper and wrote 1 + 1 just like they write their math problems then I handed the journal to Odette to see if she knew the answer. She copied the problem down next to where I had written it & handed it back to me. We are starting at ground zero. I guess if you are going to learn a new language I guess that is a good place to start. We were hoping maybe she had been in school before she went to live at the orphanage in February 2008 but it looks like that she did not. I had no idea where she was at. But the good thing is none of it even phased her and she was just glad to be sitting with me doing whatever.