6.24 - MmmMHhhmmm life is good :)

This morning I got up early and got to go for a walk through the local village with some of the volunteers. It was really neat to see them as they were all getting ready for the morning. Something neat is that they draw a special design outside of their doors each morning to keep out the evil spirits. Religion is a very integral part of the way that they live and gives a reason and a purpose to so many of the things that they do which is very neat to see. To greet someone, you say, “vanacum” with your hands clasped together in front of your face… they will say “hello” but love it when you say “vanacum” !





Today, I had the chance to work with the construction team. The main project this year is helping all of the people in the colonies participating in the microfinance programs to build bathrooms for each of their homes. Today, we went and moved piles of rocks and sand from one house to the next. They mix the sand and rocks with a powder to make morter and use the bricks brought from the volunteers as well to make their bathrooms! Most of the people that we were helping were home when we moved the rocks and sand to their homes so I didn’t get to see a lot of the people that we were helping, but it was neat to know what all of the work was going towards.






*The harder the work, the more you sweat...right?!! (some friends from my team: Drew, Mar, and Abby!







During play time today, I went to the school’s “life dance” class which was really really neat. I posted the link below to the video of the kids rehearsing one of their dances. Their teacher (a volunteer that is here for a couple of months) has been helping to choreograph this dance for the kid’s life dance class to a David Archuletta song, “Somebody Out There”. Archuletta actually came to RSO a year or two ago and sang this song to all of the kids. The kids love love love this song and constantly ask me to sing it to them at night. The dance is very touching. There is one point in the song where they all dance in a way to represent the way that their parents move with leprosy which is very beautiful (about minute 1).

** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlC-wwziiao – Somebody Out There Dress Rehearsal

*It started to pour outside while they were in dress rehersal! I lovvee the rain...especially in India :)



Tonight at family time, they brought in a huge scorpion that they had found right outside of the boys hotstle!! Yikes! We have to bring flashlights wherever we go when the sun goes down just in case we run into a snake or scorpion of some kind. Scary huh?! They are going to save the scorpion for their biology lab!


I had brought out my video camera the other night to video them making up a dance and they saw a video of Caden saying all of his animal sounds :) Sooo they wanted me to send you guys a video of them saying hello to all of you!! Here you go!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOfN55I9a88 – ‘Night Family in India

We just have so much to be grateful for. My friend ali was telling me about a little boy in her family that says that every Monday night is a bad night and all the other nights are good nights. She asked him why this was that every Monday night was bad and he said that every Monday is bad because that is the day that his mother and brother ran away. He now remembers every Monday as this terrible terrible day…
Another hard thing for the kids is to have volunteers come for a couple of weeks, become so attached to them, and then have them leave again. There is a girl in my family, Satia (I actually call her Jess and she calls me Corey :) ) that cried the whole day because the volunteer that she had become best friends with had to leave today. It was really hard to see her so sad… she said that the one thing that she wanted for her birthday was for this volunteer to come back.
Although there are a lot of sad stories like this, there are a lot of really happy stories as well. My experiences here in India are helping me to realize more and more my strengths and my weaknesses. I love it here and it is going to be hard to say goodbye to the kids and the people.

*After we put the kids to bed we got to dance in the rain :)
Euli vanacum… good night :)