Life at Bethania

We've been quite busy here back at Bethania! Our daily schedule has usually been waking up at 7, and spending time with kids while they do their morning chores. Then there's prayer at around 8.15, breakfast at around 8.30, and then the kids leave for school on the Bethania school bus. After that, we head to the fields to help GP. On Wednesday we spent a few hours digging rocks out of a plot of land. We filled up our metal bowl with all of the rocks we could dig up with our hands. Most mornings we also spend some time helping the kitchen ladies. We sit on the ground with them and peel onions, separate cauliflower, and dice other vegetables. It was raining all Thursday morning, so we didn't do any field work. We're very happy rain is finally coming! Once the rain stopped, we did all of our laundry in our buckets, and pumped water and carried it to our room.
After finishing our work and resting a bit, we have lunch everyday at 1.00. This meal seems so lonely compared to the others, us two sitting alone in the dining hall usually filled with all of our other kids! Sometimes we eat outside too.
In the afternoon we have time to rest, read, relax. We've made personalized cards for every child to give to them this Saturday for Deepavali. Everyone is very excited for it!
The kids get home a little before 5. Then we have our sweet, milky tea and a snack, and spend time with them as they wash their school uniforms. Then we have some fun time; drawing, making cards, playing with spinning tops, trying to teach chess... On Thursday only the two oldest boys, Muniyappan and Chinnaiya, came home early on their bikes, so we listened to music with them. They were not impressed with our lack of Tamil/Hindi music, but liked some of our American music. T.I. was a big hit but they weren't feeling Bob Marley. They said they're going to tell us some Tamil rap songs to get.
At night, the kids usually have practice for their Christmas performance (they're going to be very, very prepared after about 3 months of rehearsing!) After that and prayer, we teach or play games with different age groups. On Wednesday we played Uno, drew, and read ISpy books with the 7 girls up to 6th grade. Stickers were involved too, naturally. This is always a very fun, active time. On Thursday, we worked with the 10 boys up to grade 8 after prayer. We learnt about shapes, had every boy draw, spell and say out loud the names of shapes- square, circle, rectangle, etc. Then we tested them; their favorite part! By the time we have dinner at 8, we're usually exhausted! After dinner we spend a few hours sitting in the hall with the older girls. We talk, draw sometimes, help them with English homework. The older girls are very fun, love to talk and gossip with us. We get to learn a lot from them. The language barrier doesn't stop the stories at all, and its good for them to be practicing their English. We also were given Tamil lessons! We're making progress, but have a lot to learn still. We have numbers up to ten down, and some important phrases.