India 2009!

On Sunday, we woke up early and headed over to SOUP because we were taking the children to the playground for the day! It was amazing to see all the children and they were all so excited to go! We all piled into rickshaws (emphasis on PILED). A rickshaw that usually holds two people was holding me and five other children. We finally got to the place called Elephant Park and it was beautiful! It’s just a huge piece of open land with a playground, a miniature zoo, and lots of flowers! The children were obsessed with taking pictures with all of the beautiful scenery. After being cooped up in a small room for the week, it was awesome to see the children running around and having so much room to play. We played jump rope and tag and just spent hours going down the slide, swinging on the swings, sitting on the seesaw. It was very hot but no one even minded because we were having so much fun! When we got back to SOUP, I played this game called Carrom with a few of the children. When they originally taught me the game, I was horrible at it. But I had actually made some improvement this time and the children were so excited for me…it was adorable! We also got to just sit and relax with the children for a little. I talked to Neelam and Sonu who are 17 and 18 years old. We found out that Neelam is actually engaged and will be married next year! And she is getting married to Sonu’s brother!

When we got home, Katie and I both passed out because we were exhausted. Then we did our wash and headed over to Sachindra’s house. It was nice getting to talk to Sachindra. He has such a great perspective on social work and asks questions that challenge Katie and I to really think about our work and what we want to accomplish with SOUP. After our serious conversation about where our project is heading, Sachindra drove us down to the place where the two rivers meet here in Allahabad. It was amazing and beautiful and we made plans with him to go see the sunrise there one morning.