Today
was a free day for us! Apparently India had no gas all day so our
scheduled all day trip (including a 8 hour van ride) was cancelled! It
was a pleasant surprise because the constant travel has worn us out and we were
going to have to leave early.
It
was Sports Day here at Rising Star and it was pretty neat. They had a
mini Olympics and many dignitaries from the surrounding villages came.
They even had white doves to open the ceremonies! Impressive.
One of my favorite parts of the ceremonies was when Sally Read (President
Madame- that's what the Indian people here call her) hoisted up the flag and
Jasmine fell out of flag. Small details like that is so typical of this
culture.
There
were races: running, potato sack, and spoon (a small lemon is put on a spoon in
their mouth) and there were also pyramid building competitions and my favorite:
yoga demonstrations. Oh India ....
Nageesh
won the lemon spoon race!
Everyday
at 4 there is play time for the kids and this is where you really start to bond
with the children here. There is a huge soccer game everyday and I
usually play with them. The boys are crazy and it is super hot so I'm
usually drenched with sweat and have blisters on my feet by the end.
It is so much fun even if they don't play by the rules (hand balls are
very common).
Tonight
they had a movie night for the kids and it was pretty entertaining. I
walked into the Dining Hall where they had it projected into a screen and
Subastri immediately got up and led me to where her and Nageesh were sitting.
Nageesh has sort of claimed me and I'm okay with that since she is the
sweetest girl ever.
The
movie was an Indian movie so I had Nageesh translate parts of it for me.....
Interesting is all I can say. Very different.
Each
night we go to our own houses. Two of us were each assigned a family
house and we go from 730 - 900. Usually this is time for us to help them
with last minute homework and get to bed but school hasn't started yet so it
has been just fun time.
After
we got back to The Elephant House we made brownies and cookies ... with no
oven. we cooked it in the microwave and it was delicious! I will never
take sweet things for granted again. It was gone in about two minutes.
We
then played Pictionary and it got intense. It was a super close game with
two big comeback runs. My team won by one square! As the indians
say, "Suuupa"! (super)
