India 2009!

It was HOT today. So humid. It needs to rain. Our onions can only do so much.

Today at SOUP Michelle came up with a BRILLIANT arts and crafts plan! We’ve been saving all of our toilet paper rolls. Originally this was so that we’d know how much money to budget for them. But Michelle had the idea of filling them with seeds from the ground outside and making shakers out of them!! The kids really liked this activity, even though Gautam was blatantly old enough to understand exactly why we had so many rolls of toilet paper. I really loved watching all of them work so hard on their individual shaker.

I then went to go grab Joy to translate our second activity for us to the kids, and he told me that SOUP had just been invited to a conference on trafficking in Delhi in July! Michelle and I might go with him, which would be sick nasty exciting.

Anyway, our second activity was we wanted each child to draw on a piece of paper different things that represented themselves. This was a little challenging for them –at first they kept copying the examples Michelle and I had drawn, and we realized that they actually might not do activities like this very often in school. After some encouragement though, we helped them draw things that are meaningful to them – it was really cool to see all the different things that they drew! My favorite moment was when a younger boy, Rohit, showed me his paper, which was only half-filled. “Can you draw more?” I asked him, motioning that I wanted the paper to be filled. Immediately he was like “No, didi, no.” “No more?” I asked, trying to convince him. Finally he grinned and was like “Ok, didi, more.” About 10 minutes later he came back with another huge smile on his face. He was holding a huge picture of a peacock. I turned to Gautam, our translator. “Gautam?” I asked. “What’s the Hindi word for peacock?” “More!” he replied. I started laughing so hard I almost cried. Poor Rohit.

Eventually we’re going to take all the brainstorming that the children have done on these papers and help them transfer them to the canvas squares Michelle and I cut up the other day. That way we have a big huge mural representing what is important to the children! I’m so excited to see the final result!

Another exciting part of the day was when Abishek, Heena’s older brother, arrived from where he has been staying in a nearby village. He was a little bit shy and didn’t really know what to make of Michelle and I, but I’m excited to get to know him.

After lunch we spent some more time with Joy filling out the intake forms. I really am so impressed at how much he is able to remember about each individual child. And he is so patient with Michelle and I – the children’s stories are very convoluted and sometimes confusing, and at one point Michelle and I just broke down laughing because no matter how many questions we ask him and no matter how lost and confused we are in the story he is telling, he just keeps on patiently trying to answer what we ask him.

We also had some good news –Kyle, who originally constructed SOUP’s website, has spent all this time converting the programming he did for the website into a format Michelle and I (or anybody else) will be able to easily edit! We are SO grateful to him because he legitimately pulled an all-nighter to get it finished before he leaves for his vacation on Friday and we can’t wait to get started adding a few things to the website. We want to have a section that can be easily updated, kind of like a blog, and explain a little better what the programming looks like at SOUP. We also want to have a section that gives some numbers to demonstrate just how much SOUP has accomplished. Joy was caring for only 22 children when the shelter home closed in January, but that was because he only cares long-term for children that cannot be returned home. Since the shelter home began functioning in 2002 he has actually assisted 562 children!!

After doing some more work on the computer, Michelle went to go teach Gautam some more computer engineering things and I went outside with Rinky for a little bit. I attached lanyards to my camera and my video camera, so that the children can wear them around their necks and take pictures without me being afraid they’re break them, and Rinky has really fallen in love with my camera. She took me outside to the back wall, and we climbed up on it and looked out over one of the university fields, where a bunch of neighborhood boys were playing cricket. Then she took me up onto the roof of their house! It’s HUGE and it was so beautiful up there! We just goofed around taking silly pictures of each other for awhile. I really love spending individual time with Rinky. She’s this awesome combination of independent, smart, a little bit stubborn but unbelievably patient. For example, if she doesn’t like an activity we’re doing, she doesn’t demand attention the way the other children will- she’ll just leave, because she knows she can be of more help to Grace or Joy around the house, or knows that she’ll have more fun doing her own thing somewhere else. She also takes incredibly good care of Kajal and is always there for her when she needs her. She also tells unbelievably good stories – scares the crap out of me pretending to be a ghost!! Ok so secretly, I guess the reason I love spending time with Rinky is because in a lot of ways she reminds me of myself, and she’s hard to spend time with during the day when there are so many other children demanding attention.

Afterwards Michelle and Rahul and Gautam came up to the roof for a little bit. Rinky and I tried to scare Michelle coming up the stairs but Gautam is just way too loyal and told Michelle where we were as soon as she came upstairs. We went back downstairs and sat outside relaxing with Angeli and Rajiv before it was time to head home.