I may have spent the last three weeks at the children’s hospital but duty calls and I’m now at back living that orphanage life. Which I must say is quite a lot nicer the second time around. Nicer because their are toddlers back from school, as the orphanage isn’t specifically for special needs but it caters to abandoned and orphaned children of all varieties, and there are about 10x more volunteers than their were last time. Ten times does sound like a lot except really, it just means ten because their was only one volunteer there last time not associated with my program. The energy is up, smiles are happening, and Hank is just doing his solo jam session dance parties. We all know the saying, “You can’t spell jam party without rap.” Have I ever called it a jam party and did I really want to call it a jam session or jam sesh? Yes, of course I did. Lo and behold though, you can manage to spell those without rap so I had to do some careful editing. It’s also true what they, you haven’t seen a…okay, never mind, they don’t say these sayings and no one will actually believe that anyone does. I could say it’s a Morocco thing but it’s not, I just want to have sources to back up my super cool claims about myself. All that I’m really trying to say is that these kids love Nicki Minaj. It’s true that Nadir and I have our jam out sessions where we listen to things outside of Nicki Minaj and by listen, I mean we go off to our own corner and bob our heads to the music until he looks and me and tells me to stop and he continues on his own. He’s liked anything I’ve managed to throw at him which I’ve enjoyed because I just play random songs and he grooves to the beat nevertheless. Muhed though, he’s a sucker for Nicki. Just yesterday he was angling to get more and more of that Moroccan music, that Arabian flair, but as soon as Monster by Kanye West came on he was a different man. Which then obviously was followed by Nicki’s, the Pinkprint, and her hit single, Anaconda. We went through quite a few songs on the album and he never let go of my phone. Since he was holding onto it, and just dancing. I was a little worried that he’d throw my phone right smack dab in the asphalt but I think he was too entranced by the melodic tunes to even dare such a thing. As I walked with older kids, I didn’t limit myself to just Nicki, I did bust out Kanye (as previously mentioned), Kendrick Lamar, and of course, show tunes. I’m not entirely sure what the other volunteers may think of me when I’m singing, quite loudly I must add, the Little Shop of Horrors Broadway soundtrack but at least the majority only speak French so I wouldn’t be able to understand whatever they were saying about me anyways. For all I know they probably do speak English as well since all Europeans seem to be at least bilingual but I’m going to tell myself they only speak French and are constantly in awe of my belting out girl’s solos. It’s just good to feel that the orphanage is a bit more carefree, and loose, and just less depressing compared to how I started to feel at the end of my first stint there. I know if I was there for a long period of time again, then the same feelings would most likely start creeping back up onto me but with this brief two week period I think I should be okay. It’s still sad when you think about it, it’s still sad that you know these kids will live and die here, but it’s reassuring to know that we’re making a bit of an impact when I can just walk around with someone and sing off key (to put it lightly) and have them enjoy it. On Monday when I first came back there, Nadir came up to me immediately and gave me a big hug and a kiss. Other kids remembered me and made mention of it. At the very least, I’m doing something right. So it goes.