India Part 4

For some reason, this took a long time to post, so I had to re-post it today (May 2nd) .. I think its now showing that I posted it about a week ago though. Oh I don't know, I'm confused!! Anyway, here's Part 3 of my India Trip (I'll go faster after this, I promise!!)

The Conference (and more of my girls!)

So on Monday, after we visited all the classes, and met with the principal (called "Madam" :D) we went into the Auditorium, where the "International Stop Sex Selection Conference" was getting ready to start.

In India, since girls are generally thought of as not important, many pregant girls will find out the sex of their child, and then make the decision to abort if the baby is a female. This is a very sad, yet very real problem facing India right now, and the conference was dedicated to stopping that problem. It was actually quite a big deal, with video cameras casting it onto live TV! As it was an "International" conference, we were the international guests (along with the guests at the orphanage from Holland), and sat at the front while the conference went underway. We even made it into three local newspapers! (the picture was terrible too :S) There were some speakers, and then we went and sat down again to watch presenations by the girls. First some of the college girls came out a did a dance, and I took a short video of it:

And then here are the littlest girls doing a dance, and then the older, grade 9-grade11ish girls doing a dance.. the one in the older girls' dance that I focus on for most of the video, with shortish hair, who is supposed to be a "boy" is Yankila, and she's SUCH a good dancer!! Aw she was so sweet, I loved her :) Oh, and listen carefully to the music playing for the older girls' dance.. its our team's favourite song ever!! :D

Here are a few of the girls at the assembly, and a cute video of Nitu and Salu being silly.

And here are the rest of my precious little girls...

--> Seena: She is the sweetest thing. She was always with me, just holding my hand, or smiling at me. She was pretty quiet, but you could tell she loved to just be noticed, and to be with someone. She wrote letters for me (3 of them) my dad, mom, and sister, and a New Years Card for our whole family so that none of us would ever forget her. Aw, it was adorable. She's the one on the left of me in this picture (the other one is Devika, who I talked about in the last post)






--> Amy: Amy's full name is Amy Carmichael, and she is very special to everyone at the Michael Job Centre. I'm not saying that they favour her, but she was one of the very first little girls to be taken to the Centre. She was found when she was a tiny baby, buried up to her head in rocks, simply because she is a girl. Thanks to the Michael Job Centre, she is now one of the happiest kids I've ever met. She was always hyper, smiley, and full of joy. I swear it seemed like she was permanently on Cloud 9. The only time I ever, ever saw her not happy was 5 minutes before we left, when she began to cry.. but I'll write about that when it comes to it. Unfortunately, I don't think I ever got a picture with just her (but if I did, I'll get it from my friend later), but this is a picture of her with my friend Danielle.

--> Katherine: Katherine was such a sweetie.. I have a picture of her and me with a couple of other little girls, but its on (yet again!) my friend's camera, so I'll put that up later. She was actually a staff kid, but she was so sweet, and so involved with the rest of the kids at the Centre. She's the one on the left in the pink in this picture.

--> Susmitta: One of Salu's best friends, they were always together. Her, Salu, and I had this game where they would come up and pinch me, and I would have to go around chasing them everywhere until I could catch and tickle them. It was actually quite tiring, but they absolutely loved it, and Susmitta's grin was huge.

--> Srijana: Susmitta's older sister. She is so pretty! She was adorable too... I met her once the day before we left for our Easter Weekend away (which I'll talk about soon..) and when we came back, the kids were all so excited, crowding around us and asking us what their names were- one of their favourite games; "Auntie.. my name?" I would hate it when I knew all of them except for say one or two.. then I would just be like, "I remember you, but I forget how to spell your name- they're big into spelling everything- what's the spelling again?" And then they would be happy that I remembered them. Usually I did remember them, I just couldn't remember their names.. its not easy learning 306 names in a couple of days! Anyway, Srijana came to me, and asked me if I remembered her, and somehow I did. She had the hugest smile on her face, and said to me, "You are the first one to remember my name right!" and she hugged me. After that, she would always come and talk to me and teach me Nepali (her first language). In fact, she gave me this sheet full of Nepali phrases, and told me it was my "homework" and she was going to test me on it later! :) Sorry the picture's so little! The formatting didn't work on my computer.. she's the one of the right.

And of course there were many more beautiful and special girls.. Esther, Lia, Nitu, Neha, Honey, Dolly... but these are just a few (including Devika, Salu, and Rhoda from the last post) that especially touched my heart. And I miss them all so much.

India Part 3

Today's theme is....

Monday: Our First Full Day at the Centre

I promise I won't do a huge post on every single day of our trip, but our first day was packed, and its just easier to write about it as a seperate post.

Monday morning was the first of many early wakeups. Not even a full day after arriving, and already we were thrown into the schedule, starting by getting up at 5am every morning. As we were getting ready, around 5:30, we heard a tap on the door, and our 2 wonderful "room-girls" (basically just in charge of making sure our bathroom was tidy, and bringing us tea.. we felt kind of bad!) Fay and Yankila came in with a tray bearing 4 cups of steaming hot Indian tea. It was so delicious, and right away we fell in love with it. As chapel was every morning at 5:45, we had to hurry out the door only a few minutes after recieving our tea.. we all went through the day with burnt tongues and throats!

Chapel was the same every day, but it was especially cool the first day, as we had never experienced it before. We would be sitting in the chapel, and the girls would all be on stage, singing in a choir (the same as when we first arrived). Then after a few songs, they would come down and we would all sing some worship songs together. There would be a speaker (usually one of the older girls, if it wasn't one of us) and then they would pray, and sing two more songs. The end songs were always the same, ending with "Abba, Father". I still can't get that tune out of my head;

"Abba, Father, let me be
Yours, and yours alone..."

I miss those sweet voices singing so earnestly, then turning around, eagerly trying to be the first to reach us, and gain possession of one of our hands. Devika, always the thinker, realized that if she draped my arm around her shoulder, and my other arm around someone else's shoulder, then not only could there be those two girls, but still another two of them (if not more) could hold my hands! This way I usually had at least 4 girls huddled around me.

After chapel, came exercise. That Monday we had no idea what they meant, but followed them anyway as they dragged us towards the back of the compound, saying "Now exercise.. now we run!" Despite their excitement, that really didn't sound too appealing to us jetlagged, exhausted Canadians. But off we went anyway.

We discovered that exercise consisted of one lap around the track, followed by various stretches, lead by their "gym" teacher. The girls all thought it was hilarious when we started to join in, and we seemed to be more of a distraction than anything!



After exercise there was about an hour until breakfast, so we went back to our room to get our journals, and waterbottles, and cameras so that we wouldn't have to keep going back during the day. It was then that we saw our first Indian sunrise. It was soo beautiful, and the view from our 'balcony' was gorgeous! The hallways of the hostel and both colleges, and the school were all open, like balconies, so it was very airy and cheery in the buildings, as the sun could shine in anywhere.




Here's a video of us enjoying our first sunrise! This is just outside our room, so when I turn the camera towards Danielle, the door that you see is leading into our bedroom.

These are the girls running to greet us, and take us to breakfast..







Breakfast started at 8:15, but they would go to the cafeteria at 8:00, and sing for 15 minutes until the food came. This happened at every meal, and was so cute! There was a birthday that day, so we first heard their special birthday song that morning. Its very similar to the traditional birthday song, but they have three verses. Its very cute.

"Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear *****,

Happy Birthday to you!

From all friends and (I think they mean "to") you,

From young hearts and true,

May God's love go with youuuu,

And happiness too!

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday,

Happy Birthday to you!"

The birthday girl was Correy (her full name was Correy Ten-Boom, after the famous missionary :D) and she was beaming all day, in her beautiful red birthday dress- they're allowed to wear whatever they want on their birthdays, instead of uniform. You can see her in the next picture.. the only one out of uniform!

This is Eve, the youngest non-staff child at the school.. she's adorable!!

After breakfast there was assembly at 9:00, where 3 of the tiniest girls recited an adorable poem (along with 6 other "items" of the day) and we introduced ourselves again, this time with the College girls in attendance. This is a video of the girls marching to assembly; they would do this every single morning (except for weekends).

After that we went around to every classroom, from Pre-school to grade 12, and greeted them, talked to a few of them, took some pictures, and went on to the next class. It was very cute, as the girls who we had met before would get so excited to see us, and be so proud that they already knew us, while their classmates didn't yet.

That day we also got to work on the lessons we would be teaching to the girls that week, and just get to know the girls more. Here are some of my special girls.. I met most of them on Monday, and a few the next couple of days. I'll just talk a bit about all of them now though, so that I don't forget to talk about them later.

--> Devika(9yrs): My first sweetie. She is so bossy, but still adorable. I talked a bit about her before, so I'll just leave it at this.. I don't have a picture of just me and her, but my friend has one on her camera, and she's going to email it to me soon, so I'll put it up then.

--> Salu(8yrs): She is one of the most adorable little girls I know. She was kind of everyone's little girl, but especially Danielle, then me, then Kate. We loved her so much, and she was seriously like a burst of sunshine in the centre. Many of the other girls were too of course, but whenever I think of Salu, I think of smiles and giggles :) Oh, and teaching her to speak French too! She thought it was so funny that her name means "Hello" in another language, so we taught her a little conversation in French. It went like this:


Us: Bonjour
S: Salut!
Us: Comment-ca va?
S: Ca-ba bien! (she couldn't quite get all the words right, but she was so good at it!)
Us: Comment t'appelle tu?
S: Je (she pronounced the "Je" as "Juh") m'appelle Salu.
Us: Bye-Bye!
S: Aurevoir!

She was so proud of herself, and we really wanted to get it on video, but we only have a tiny bit, and then we all started goofing around. Its a hilarious video though.. it shows Salu's adorable personality so well! It was during the second week, but I'll just post it here, so you can "meet" Salu. (this is in our EXTREMELY messy bedroom.. none of us are very neat or organized people, so it was pretty much in a constant state of.. filth :P)

--> Rhoda(6yrs): One of the sweetest little girls EVER!!! I seriously love that little girl so much, and I feel sad just writing her name. She was super shy, and it took her a while to come up to anyone, but one day she just came and put her hand on my knee (I was sitting on a little wall), and smiled up at me, and from then on she never left my side.. and also wouldn't go to, or talk to anyone else on our team! For example, one day one of our leaders was doing balloons, and she really wanted one, so she said (actually for the first week.. pretty much until the last few days we were there, she was so shy that she wouldn't really talk, she would kind of whisper into her arm, and I would have to stick my ear right in her mouth to even begin to understand what she was saying. Somehow that made her even more adorable :D) to me, "Auntie (they called us auntie.. so cute!!) me balloon?" And of course, I said, "Yes, you can have one. Go ask Uncle Pat for one." And she looked and me, and kind of smiled, and shook her head, and whispered "No, you please Auntie." awwww, my heart melted, just because she was so ADORABLE!!! NO matter what she did, she was adorable. Even when she was trying to get our chocolate from our bedroom, none of us cared, cause she was so darn cute!! I miss that girl soo much. :( Here's a quick little video (once again, our messy bedroom!) of her.

Well, this post is long enough, so I'll just put it up now. I'll post about the rest of my girls and the International conference we were guests at next time! :)

India Part 2

It took a little longer than expected to get this next part up, as I've been catching up with tons of homework/tests at school, but from now on I'll be trying to post another part every/every other day. Promise!! I've really been missing the girls today, and just missing being with my team. I thought writing out the next part of my trip might help a little.

So, the next section of my Indian Adventure:

Settling In and Getting to Know The Girls

So after our amazing welcome, we had our first lunch there (it wasn't the greatest meal... the meat was almost all bones :S) and then some of the girls showed us to our rooms. Us girls were staying at the Arts and Sciences College, while the leaders and the guys were staying at the other end of the campus, at the Michael Job Hostel (except for Taylor, who was in a random room at the chapel all by himself :P). Despite the fact that it was supposed to be 3 girls to a room, Tiffany, Danielle, Kate and I all went into one room, and me and Danielle shared the big bed... lots of good times and memories shared in that room!

Anyway, us 4 went and played with some of the girls, and had an awesome time. We were the only ones who were actually up and out of our rooms.. everyone else was fast asleep! But we had lots of fun, and were glad we did, even though it meant we were extra tired the next day. This is just a short video of us playing tag with the girls that afternoon, in the courtyard by the chapel.

The girls were all obsessed with taking pictures and using our cameras, and were so sweet. They would come up to us and say, "Auntie, me now, me take picture now!" After a while it got a little out of hand, but it was so cute! It also resulted in my camera being loaded with useless pictures, but at least they had fun! :)

I met one of my special little friends that night. Her name was Devika, and she was absolutely obsessed with me. It sounds kind of conceited, but its the total truth. She would get so jealous if any other girls were with me, and would even push them away so that she could hold my hand. At first I found her slightly irritating (which made me feel so guilty! :S) but by the 5th or 6th day I had grown to love her. She was so sweet, and would always want to "catch" (which is what they said instead of carry) my things for me. She was still extremely bossy about who could be around me, but I loved her anyway.

That evening it was just us four again at dinner (joined by Taylor), and it was fun to just hang out with the girls, and be with them without our entire team being there.. not that I didn't like my team, it was just less stressful not having anything that we had to do. So, this post won't be too long, as its mostly just the pictures that will tell the story of the first few days, but I'm just trying to give you a glimpse as to what our whole trip was like.

Our Welcome Sign in the Auditorium/Cafeteria

Our first meal at the Centre


They were all soo excited to meet us!! :)



Showing us to our rooms. The girls you can see are Katherine (in the pink), Salu (in the middle, with the white and blue) and Tina (on the end with the green)... they're all such sweeties!!




Meeting the girls, and getting to know them. This is me, with Nitu (left), Ammu (middle), and Epseba (right).

Me and Ammu, Nitu, and Leana on the right

Me with Esther on the right, and I'm not sure what the other girl's name is.

Me and my first special little friend, Devika (on the right).


Playing Tag!

One of the many frogs that only showed up at night.


Some pictures of the Centre (its actually really nice!). This is the chapel, its right in the centre of the compound.
The two college's, with the girls' hostel in the middle. We stayed in the college on the far right.


The Michael Job Hostel, where the leaders and 3 guys stayed.
The Pre-School to Grade 12 school

The "playground" on the back field, which was known as the "Stadium".