I’m spending another couple of weeks right before Christmas helping out at the children’s activity area in the Ukraine refugee reception center at Przemysl, Poland.
Today and yesterday were both red-letter days for me in the children’s activity space, because on both days I was able to engage a child to sit with me to read an entire picture book. This is a significant development, because it never happened a single time previously, during the entire month of September and this couple of weeks in December.
It was the same book on both days – a little thing called “Where is Santa?” It tells a simple story of a child’s Christmas holiday experience, starting out with a morning discovery of an overnight fall of fresh snow, then making a handsome snowman, then snacking on some gingerbread cookies, then putting up a Christmas tree and decorating it with candy canes. Then the story segues to sharing presents on Christmas Day, and closes with some high-jinks on a snow sled. Every page in the book also has numerous images of Santa Claus, both large and small, so kids can play some “Where’s Waldo” type games, trying to find all the Santas hidden in the illustrations on each page as they are reading the story. It’s a fun little adventure-on-paper.
Another funny thing happened this morning: All the kids are supposed to take off their shoes and leave them at the entrance. Today we had a big group of kids waiting to dash in when I opened at 9:30, so some of them forgot to take off their shoes. So during the morning whenever I noticed a kid wearing shoes in the play space, I would remind him to take them off. Most of the kids understood right away when I pointed to the jumble of shoes by the entrance, and they would go right over and leave their shoes there as well. But one little boy, about 7 or 8 years old I guess, refused to cooperate. I marched him over to the entrance and sat down amidst the jumble of shoes myself, gesturing at my own socked feet. But he still refused to sit down and take off his boots. So I impatiently shoo’ed him out of the play space. But a little while later, I spotted him again in the play space, still wearing his boots. He must have come back when I wasn’t looking. I grabbed him again and started to march him toward the entrance again, but this time he pulled up his pantleg and pointed at the top of his ankle, and that’s when I realized he wasn’t wearing socks!
His little brother didn’t have socks either. I walked them both over to the Red Cross clothing storeroom and the ladies there gave them each a pair of clean socks right away.