Back at Bethania! September 28th and 29th

We're so happy to be back at Bethania! Yesterday, after a good breakfast of rava dosa at Chandra's, we loaded up all of our stuff and some pipes for collecting rainwater and set off in the school bus for Bethania. We got the warmest welcome from all the boys that met us at the road! Pandi, Chella Pandi, Akash, Kartick, Alagasarmy, Antony, Satish, Muniapan and others all met us and told us that they were happy to have us back! We told them that we'd missed them a lot too! Their smiling faces just lit up, and we couldn't help but smile back. We settled back in and quickly returned to our routine of coloring, playing Uno, playing on the playground, singing, talking and even some dancing... There are also 2 girls here for a few days from the Kodai school. After we'd rested and had tea, we went for an evening walk with the kids up the mountain. It was beautiful watching the sunset as the kids took tons of pictures of themselves and collected gorgeous peacock feathers with the full eyes on them. Muniapan, the oldest boy, gave Paige 8 long feathers with bright blue and green eyes. MK carved "Kelsey" onto cactus leaves. The kids were all laughing and asking to have pictures taken of them non-stop. The view from up there was incredible. You could see all the mountains and fields, and Bethania below us. We watched with the kids as the sky changed colors and the moon came out. Their laughter and singing was so wonderful to hear as they ran up and down the face of the cliff.
We're so happy that we have this whole 10 day festival to spend with the kids, as they don't have school.
Today, we organized a big capture the flag game, or "dolphins vs peacocks" (our team names), as they call it. Karthick, our little 7 year-old friend, has developed his own rules for capture the flag, that basically allows him to be tagged repeatedly and never go to jail, unless he wants to get you out of jail, in which case you MUST COME SISTER! He's very cute so of course you obey. "Uno playing" happened a lot, as well as English lessons with the 8th and 9th grade girls. We had them listen to a story that we read out loud and answer questions about it. It was definitely a challenge for them, as most find it much easier to read, memorize, and copy than to listen and understand! It was good to work with them on it. The comprehension is really important, so tomorrow we're having the girls act out the story, 'The Ugly Duckling,' while we read it aloud. The hardest part was just working with the 8 girls and trying to not have the other kids come in and distract them! They love to be tested and graded. Big Muthumari and Rani did very well. It was a clear give away that there was a lot of copying happening when 5 of the 8 papers had "yellow" spelled as "ailleo." Spelling by sounding words out is something we've been working with the little kids a lot on, but it appears the older girls could use help a lot. In school I think they just spell everything for everyone and have them copy it, so no one ever learns to spell for themselves. The English school books have been really hard for Kelsey and I to read as the English is often grammatically incorrect or confusing. Which is a shame, cause it's nice to be able to help the older kids with their English homework, but it's embarrassing if we can't figure it out.
We had a lot of fun picking out books from the library and having kids read them to us. A lot of the books are old though, and colored on or torn. It's good that the children have books to read though, which they obviously really enjoy.
We spent a lot of the morning picking spinach leaves off the stems with the kitchen ladies and some girls. It was a very fun experience and I really enjoyed Paige's singing. All of the kids help out in taking care of everything- Pandi and the boys feed the many dogs and cat, Mooga and the young girls bring the 5 cows food, the geese are fed, Muthalakshmi and Priya peel onions, girls pump water and carry buckets to the kitchen. Muthumari taught Kelsey the proper technique of carrying the heavy buckets of rainwater- by balancing it right above the hip. Though a lot definitely spilled all over my shirt, Muthumari said I was doing it right! She took over when we walked up the stairs though. We're learning!