Today was a busy day at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. We had about two dozen Ukrainian kids registered in, ranging in age from about 1 year to about 15 years. A group of older kids had a fun time playing board games with one of our volunteers who is a native Polish speaker and also speaks fluent Russian. I think she was able to communicate with them quite fluidly because the Ukrainian language is similar to both Russian and Polish.
The younger kids had fun strewing toys and puzzle pieces across the floor, playing with building blocks and speeding around on the bicycles. Volleyball was more popular than soccer today.
A high point to the day for me was face painting. Our volunteer coordinator actually started the face-painting studio in the morning, and was busy most of the day painting kids faces. By afternoon, the kids had become completely familiar with the process, and started painting we volunteers’ faces. The other volunteers right now are all women, and they had their faces nicely painted with butterflys, kittens and things. But I got the rough treatment. First, they painted me as some sort of blue zombie. Then they let me wash my face so they could start over. The second time around, they let me choose an animal from their guidebook. I chose a puppy dog. It came out cute, but, I don’t understand why, the kids painted the whiskers under my chin instead of under my nose. We did one more after that — a green aligator. It was fun — just like a circus clown needs to be laughed at, I also enjoyed the special attention.