India 2009!

We arrived at SOUP late today because we spent the morning diagnosing Michelle with strep throat and “eating-too-much-village-food” disease! Wahoo! And we learned that azithromycin cures both strep throat and stomach problems. Wonderful life! Who needs med school? I think I’ll just take azithromycin from now on!!

Anyway, when we finally did arrive at SOUP, Joy called us into his office. He was wearing a giant wool hat. “It’s freezing,” he said, grinning. “I don’t know what to do about the situation.” Then he pulled it off and looked at us very seriously. “Actually, girls, it’s around 46 Celsius. We have an Indian remedy to protect your body from heat waves.” I got so excited, remembering my dehydration spell from the night before. He then handed us two onions. “A onion?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do with this?” Mangla grinned and gestured that I needed to put it down my shirt. So, for the rest of the day, I wore an onion in my sports bra to protect myself from the heat. I think it was actually just more successful at keeping creepy strangers away from me.

Because we had missed most of the morning, we just spent the remaining time before lunch relaxing with the children. We showed them the pictures of them that we’ve taken and stored on our laptop, which they LOVE! I can’t wait to get a few of the pictures developed so we can leave some behind for the children to have. I’m also starting to get really good at “Karumb,” one of the children’s favorite games.

After lunch, I spent some time with Heena teaching her how to make a friendship bracelet. There is something so satisfying to me about being able to sit there with a child and be there for them every single time there is a knot or their string gets tangled. It reminds me of one of my first memories from when I was a child. I was maybe 3 and I woke up early one morning and was sitting in my room, playing with a Barbie doll, when all of a sudden her head fell off. I had no idea what was going on, all I knew that my doll was broken, so I went running into my mom’s room to find her, and she wasn’t there. She was in the shower, but I didn’t know that, and so for the next 15 minutes all I remember is running around the house, screaming and crying, convinced that I was alone in the world. Soon my mom came out, heard me crying, and came to find me. Just like that her arms were around my, my Barbie doll was fixed, and everything was fine. Working with these kids has made me realize that until SOUP they had never known that kind of stability. When their knots got tangled, or their dolls’ heads fell off, they had no one to turn to. And now they have Joy and Grace and all the amazing people that work with them! I really had taken for granted up until this point how important it is to grow up knowing that there is at least one other person in the world who would do anything to make sure that you are OK.

I also started teaching Kajal how to jumprope!! I think the most exciting part was that usually, all of the other kids are really impatient and are always yelling to get a turn, but when they realized I was trying to teach Kajal, they immediately stopped screaming and started trying to help her as well. First we taught her the concept of jumping straight up and straight down by teaching her that she had to land on the jumprope, which she could feel with her feet. Then we taught her only to jump when she hears us yell “jump!” It took awhile, but after a lot of practice she was finally able to clear one turn of the rope with a jump!!

Watching her jumprope inspired me to take her and work with her on the computer for a little bit. We’ve been avoiding working with her because the reality is that she can’t see what’s going on, but seeing how eager she was to learn how to jumprope changed my mind. Our role here isn’t to decide what Kajal can and can’t do. So what if she can’t see the computer screen? She is a beautiful, smart, determined little girl and God forbid if I’m the one who tells her she can’t use the computer. I have faith that she’ll figure it out. So, I sat with her and started teaching her how to type. She caught on RIGHT away and has mastered the home keys better than my own parents!!

Before dinner Michelle worked her engineering skills on the giant canvas Joy bought for all the kids to turn into a mural. I had the idea of cutting it up into individual pieces so that each kid could have their own section, and then we can holepunch them and stitch them back together with all the yarn we have! I’m so excited!

After dinner, Chotu, Rahul, Gautam, Rinki, Angeli, and Joy’s nephew all piled into the car about the size of a Honda Civic to take Michelle and I home!! When we turned left instead of right and started heading in a completely different direction, suddenly we realized that Angeli had decided to take us to Civil Lines for ice cream!! There was literally no room to breathe in this car and we just kept laughing and tickling each other the whole time. Gautam taught me how to say “Oh God” in Hindi “Arre Bapre” or something like that. It’s my new favorite phase.

And then after ice cream, we brought all the kids into our apartment to show it to them! AHHH it was so awesome to show them a part of our lives!! We showed them pictures, and gave them tons of our fruit snacks, and took them out on our back porch, where Gautam and Chotu fell in love with our swings. We decided we’re going to have them all over here for dinner one night next week. I can’t wait J