Is that a rain jacket???

YUP

Because of the rain, construction was canceled. So I got to choose whether to go with medical or stay with the kids. Much of the medical teaching today was going to be in Tamil which I knew I would not understand, so the kids won out.

Three kids told me they were cold today. Seriously? Are you seriously telling me this? You know you're somewhere hot when mid 80's is cold.

This letter of P. Vijay was my favorite. First off, he numbered his sentences. It says: "1. On holiday, I played with my brother. 2. It is rainy today and I am cold. (I would like to point out it's 82 degrees and perfect!) 3. Yesterday I learned about Thomas Edison. 4. I saw an elephant when I was home." And that was the letter. I think he covered all the high points.

Then I saw the Hendershot kid's playing in the big puddles. They are so grateful for the rain. They've been here 6 months and have 6 more to go. Wow.

It was Belle's birthday, the youngest of the 5 kids. So her mom, Sarah, dressed her up in the native dress, flowers, and passed out candy. It's what all the kids do on their birthday when they're here.

And after they gathered for evening prayer...

there was cake!

Heads up...Indian cake...not good. Like biting into a sugar cube.

I got to read with a student today who was pretty good in English. He told me I could call him Steven. Some have such long names they give themselves 'short' names or easier ones. He chose a Goosebumps book. My favorite words that he asked me to define for him were: garage, backyard, Easter Egg Hunt (gave me a weird look like "why would you decorate fake eggs and hide them around outside?"),

chubby, exploded, and agree.

*took a nap*

Definitely one of my highs of the day. I think it's my body telling

me it's done...and time for me to go home...and to stop

being a vegetarian. Meat here is sketchy so there's

serious protein deficiency happening in me :)

~~~~~~~

I swear it's like India knows how to cram two days into one. There's morning, with all the groups, which feels like an entire day. Then evening, with the playtime, dinner and story time with the kids.

On Wednesday's we teach talent classes. I chose to teach how to make bracelets.

I think I tied about 40 black strings to these boys' arms who didn't

get to make one. Tried to teach them to stand in a line

and if they fought...no bracelet!

"Auntie, auntie...me, me, me! Auntie, this boy is beating

(their word for hitting)! Line, line, line!" Yeah, that's about

what I heard the whole time.

Love it.

Can I just say how much I love that

Anita's just takin' a break from homework,

picking her nose? She was busy writing from 1-100, then 100-1

(which she didn't want to do backwards, so started from the

number one at the bottom of the page and just wrote in order

all the way back to the top of the page. Ok.)

Raji

Sujata never smiles. One of the kids must have snapped this. She has no family and has taken to one of the girls, calling her her sister. I'm sure there's lots I don't know about Sujata's history, so I'm so happy to know she smiles sometimes.

I got to really get to know Raji tonight. She loves just talking to me and telling me all about her family. We sat on the floor (which is where one sits like 80% of the time here!) and she showed me all her photos on her phone of her brothers, parents and home. I think she really loved the attention and getting to show me who she was. She's a neat girl.

So the rain made for an excellent surprise this morning, and let me stay and play with the kids one extra day. Bugs unfortunately love to come inside when it's wet out, but that's ok. It's India. A lot of things just get brushed off these days...cus it's India. What'r you ganna do?