1.I got to meet the kids today! We have play time from 4:30-6 until dinner each day. We played tag, basketball, took pictures (they all wanted to pass around the camera and then they would say, “I would like to see photo!!”), soccer, braid hair, sing, swing, and just play on the playground.
*Nashanti and Durga (Durga is braiding my hair)
2.Having dinner on the roof of the elephant house. This is our hostel and it is where we are going to be having dinner each night with the program directors and all 35 volunteers. Tonight we had a really yummy Indian dish with fresh mango from the mango trees that surround the school. Something unique about the way that we eat is that we eat on huge banana leaves.
3. “Family Time”- this is where all of the volunteers are broken up into separate groups and we each go to different “families” of kids. Each of the kids is separated into different families; mine is the Shawshnarii house. We go at 7:30 right after dinner and we go to these individual homes or sections of the children’s boarding home that is right next to the school and help them with any homework that they need to finish, read to them and play with them and then the younger children are in bed by 8:00 and the standards 5-9th can go to bed at 9:00. I got to play a couple of games with the girls… some of their names were: “Nahaarri, Abby, and Messembolli”. They are easy to make laugh and in turn, you just find yourself smiling the whole time that you are with them! Naharri, one of her friends, and I sat down and they were singing songs in Tamil (their traditional language) and trying to teach me Tamil words… they thought that was pretty funny. It was neat to see how they tried to help teach me though. Naharri’s friend would talk my face in her little hands and say, “no, no, it’s …” and she would try to spell it out for me in English letters or break it up into syllables so that I could learn better. What was really fun was when they pulled out an LDS hymn book and wanted me to sing the Spirit of God with them. I was so chocked up by the middle that I stopped singing for a little bit but then Naharri stopped and looked up at me so I had to push through and keep singing. We are all children of God. My Heavenly Father loves these children so much and he wants them to be happy and he wants me to be happy over these next three weeks and throughout life. I also got to “tuck” five of them into be. When I was tucking them into bed, we told stories of Beauty and the Beast and sung “You are My Sunshine” over and over along with some of Dad’s songs thrown in there (I left out some of your sadder ones dad, haha ). Working with these girls was one of the sweetest experiences of my day. What a blessing.
4. It was amazing to see how little all of the people that I met today had. And yet they are happy. Life is filled with reasons to be sad or to complain, but it is filled also with a million reasons to laugh and be happy if we can just open our hearts and minds to see the beauty around us and the blessings that we have been given.
5. One last thing that I found really neat was that there was this kid that was at some of our meetings. His name is David and he was one of the first kids to go through the Rising Star Program and finish. Becky, the lady that runs the program, helped him to get to the United States to go to a school and graduate there. He is now turning in his mission papers! How neat is that?
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