Farm Day with the Kids

Last Saturday Tesha and I got to go to a farm outside Quito with 8 of the orfans between 5 and 10 years of age. Four of the kids who went are special needs kids and the other four are... normal(?), non-special(?), not-needy(?), developmentally [i]a tempo (?)... [i]you can fill in whichever word you think is politically correct. The kids, and Tesha and I had a lot of fun. All of the kids got to ride horses, hold rabbits and guinea pigs, sit on llamas, pet and feed goats, and cluck at chickens, geese and cows. A few of the special needs kids are non-stop energetic, so Tesha and I felt like we were herding most of the day.
My favorite special needs girl is named Tatiana and I enjoy hanging out with her because she is constantly happy, no matter what. She's about 10 years old and she's normally in a different world than everybody else. She can't talk, but she lets you know when she's super excited by screaming and shaking her hands. She also claps for herself after taking a bite of food, or any other time she feels clapping is appropriate. Whenever she sees me, she comes up to me wanting to be picked up and held, if I don't respond, she grabs onto my shoulders and climbs me like someone climbing a coconut tree.
The farm was overwhelmingly exciting for Tatiana since there were so many interesting things; she would often see something new and immediately forget what she was doing. Any time we took our eyes off of her for more than a few seconds we'd end up having to search around the farm for her, normally finding her crashing a birthday party that was being held on the farm.
I think Tatiana doesn't feel much pain because when she falls or does something that should hurt her, she just laughs. I had to take her away from the geese and then the chickens because she kept sticking her finger inside the fence and letting the birds bite her.
She really made me laugh when she was playing with the goats: She started petting the first of three goats and then slapped him in the head. I told her that it wasn't OK to do that and since it seemed like she wouldn't be hitting any more goats, we moved on to pet the next goat. After a couple pets she let out a big laugh, slapped the second goat in the head, and took off running for the third goat. I caught her before she got to the third goat and then she saw a llama and forgot all about the goats.
You can find pictures of the day at the farm on our picture site: http://community.webshots.com/user/peteandtesha
-Pete