September 24th

We are now back at Chandra's house in Pattiveerenpatti after our first 3 nights at Bethania! It was hard to say bye and tell their sad faces that we were leaving for the weekend, but at least we'll be back on Monday! They have a week 'exam holiday' off school next week so it will be very busy with all the kids there.
This morning, we showed the 10 kids (those who only had afternoon exams) pictures of our families. They loved this. I showed them a picture of my (Kelsey's) whole family from last Christmas in Miami. "There are coconut trees in America, sister?". "Are these American shops, sister?". "Very beautiful!". They loved seeing pictures of sister Jenna again, my Appa (dad), Amma (mom), and my tangachi Lindsey. Muthumari informed me that Lindsey will be coming to Bethania when she graduates in two years, like her Aka's (older sisters). They also really liked the pictures of our two dogs, Flash and Roxi, and found it hilarious that our dogs sleep on dog beds inside and play with tennis balls. We also showed them a few pictures of them with Sister Ella and Sister Jenna from last year, which they loved. They went through to name everyone in the picture and point out everything in it, like "Lollipops!". We keep getting hints to bring out presents like they got last year from Jenna and Ellinor, but considering we still have 2 mon
ths here we figured it would be best to save some of our tricks!
Later, we made a little story book for MK. He's a young boy who had given us an adorable present of a paper envelope filled with torn out little pictures of animals and keepsakes. We wanted him to keep it for himself but he kept insisting that we take it. It was so sweet! So we made a little book with the pictures and stories about them. The kids here are so generous and love to give us things they make or find- peacock feathers, ferns, bird feathers, drawings, pages they had colored from the Curious George coloring book... even little, furry, bright red spiders which the boys didn't really understand why we didn't want. Seriously there are these relatively big, fuzzy, bright red spider bugs the boys keep in a pencil case and like to hold and pet. Crazy. We read some stories with the boys. Satish, best little english scholar, told english stories; old Tamil stories and stories from the Bible. Clever King Soloman and the Clever Crow, were two very good stories. ManiKumar was really enjoying I-spy along with sweet Sethu who was particularly skilled at the spying aspect of the story. :)
Later, we played Uno and drew with the girls in their room. All 21 girls sleep on mats in one large room. We also practiced reading from I Spy books with older girls. They can all read well, but have difficulty with comprehension and its hard for them to connect the words to what the actual thing is.
All the kids came home by 4, when we had our afternoon snack of a type of sweet grain and our fourth small hill banana of the day! After this, we packed up, burnt our garbage, and got in the Bethania bus to head back to Chandra's!
The drive from Bethania to Chandra's is exceptionally beautiful. You get a lovely view from the bumpy road of the green and stone mountains, Bethania is located under, through the fields and forests of coconut trees. As we were driving the sun was beginning to set, and the blue clouds hung over the mountains with the yelllow sun shining through. We passed many bustling town centers of coconut tree homes and lots of people. We passed a university along the way named "Engineering and Technical School for Women". This seems like the definition of where we are in India- rapid progress in gender equality, quick-spreading technology and fast development; all in the middle of farmland, a few meters away from a simple grass hut and with a man herding a few dozen goats with a stick right in front of its gates.
After another delicious dinner at Chandra's we learned about where we're going tomorrow on their school's field trip, with 70 elementary school children. A three hour drive away, we're going to India's most beautiful nature preserve, one state over. There is a huge lake, over 40 tigers, tons of elephants (you can ride) and lots more. We're really excited to tour more of this beautiful, amazing, crazy country.