First day at Bethania, Sept 21st

September 21st

We arrived at Bethania, Children's home today. We woke up, packed our things and hopped in the jeep with Vijayasarathy. Along our bumpy ride, with the windows open, we passed villages, where all the homes had roofs made of dried coconut tree leaves and the people were all barefoot. The village centers were still bustling and crowded even though the streets were all dirt. We drove farther into the countryside, passing fields and coconut trees till we arrived at a small dirt road with a sign saying 'Kannivali Public School' and another reading 'Bethania Organization' after rumbling down the narrow dirt path for 2 kilometers we reached Bethania. The children sat outside on the ground, reading and studying, no school today for Ramadan. Dogs (Puppy, Peanut and Zeus) and two baby puppies played in the yard near one cow and two baby cows. After settling into our room next to the girls' dorm and having a glass of lime juice we started to meet everyone. The boys first, introducing themselves, smiling and laughing. Everyone is excited that Sister Kelsey is Sister Jenna's sister. So many new names to learn, long, complicated Tamil names. The youngest boy is 7, named Kartick. There are many boys who are between 9 and 11 and the eldest is 18. I played ball with the younger boys, flinging it in the air while everyone ran to catch it, pushing and screaming and laughing. "Sister Catch! Sister!" Kelsey played some games with the girls, like duck duck goose and other tagging games. Two younger girls, Nandini and Priya, were very eager to teach me their games. Muthamari, an older girl, thankfully was there to clarify the game rules and explain what was going on. It was hard to share all of our attention, with the quieter kids too. Two boys, Anthony and MK, showed me their string game and introduced me to the baby chickens. The girls were very sweet. Giving us tours of the land, "This is cow house.. this is chapel, beautiful Sister. Chapel super." Our new friend Ramni climbed a tree for us and picked us some guava fruit, but it was unlike any we'd seen before. We played all kinds of games, ran races and hopped on one foot playing tag. One time both the tennis balls got stuck on the roof and one of the boys, climbed two stories on a thin tree, with no branches to get them and then slid down. It was vastly impressive. We sang songs with the girls, songs about God they knew in English and then they made requests like 'Barbie Girl' and then we sang songs we both knew like Bob Marley songs. Kelsey wasn't as excited about singing as the other girls and I were. In the evenings we had tea and then the children had prayer, where we all sat on the ground sang songs, read from the Tamil Bible and prayed. We then had an english class for the kids year 2 through year 5. We brought out the uno cards and learned numbers, colors and other Uno vocabulary like "my turn" "your turn" "go." It was quite a success, especially when everyone got stickers when they finished.
It has been a very full, very fun day and I'm so happy to be here.
It's very beautiful here, nestled in the foot hills, with peacocks around, and fields and trees. There is a drought right now but rain is expected by next week. Today it rained some when we arrived. "Sister! Rain you are bringing! Rain!" I hope the real rains come soon though. "Sister, I pray for rain, Sister." For now, we're becoming experts at showers from buckets at least!