Our day began with a morning visit to Orphanage “Nezabravka”in Stara Zagora.  We met with the orphanage director and she shared some of the things that her children do and are involved in.  This is an orphanage that is more involved in the community and offer many more things to their children.  This is also a facility for children ages 4 to 7.  This orphanage is working with some biological parents to provide education and training to properly raise their children and regain custody.  We asked how many children had special needs and the director identified one child with Autism, who found out later was lucky to still be there at this facility at the age of 10.  The director said that they used to have a child with hydrocephalus but they sent it away with a shooing type motion with her hand.  As we observed there some other children with hearing impairments and vision impairments.  While the children did not display special needs in the way of genetic disorders or developmental disabilities, these children do have special needs.  They have experienced loss, separation, the must share attention with many other children, they do not have a father or mother, they have experienced abuse, and much more.  The needs are deeper and not defined. In addition, the director stated that these children would, however, only be adopted internationally.  When asked why, she said that many of these children were children of Gypsies and they had darker skin and were not accepted by society.  This just made me cringe especially as these children are healthy and children who are only being prevented a family because of the color of their skin.  I would have loved to have tucked these children into my bags and taken them home and shown them the love they deserve.

During our morning visit, we did music with the four and five year olds, and the one child with Autism, who were not yet attending school.  We provided many interactive activities where the children learned some new activities, were able to play with the instruments that we had brought, and interact with us.  We provided the children to be children and play, dance, play instruments, and sing.  They had a blast!  The language was not the barrier that it was when working in the Women’s Shelter.  The children made attempts to sing along with us even with the English songs.  Their favorite was “Matilda the Gorilla”, much as it is here with children of the same age.  We were allowed to take pictures but were asked to limit the face shots of children.