October 4th and 5th

We woke up on Sunday morning and ran to Chapel, our feet on the bare dirt, passing the guava trees and the empty dorms. We sat down behind the girls, their hands in the sky as the chaplain spoke. The boys and girls clapped, calling out as his Tamil words filled the chapel's stone dome. The breeze blew through, no walls, with nature all around. He sang in Tamil, his voice strong through all the little voices of the children in their nice sunday clothes, which still have too many safety pins and missing buttons. We read passages about contentment and not wanting for wealth, and appreciating simpleness. The pastor then rode away on his motorbike as we walked back to Bethania with the children for breakfast. There we were met with our friend from Kodai, Reshma and enjoyed some hot tea and coconut chutney with idly..
After breakfast I decided it was time to go to work in the library. The Kodai school had dumped a lot of books in there, making locating books nearly impossible. So with the help of the children, while Kelsey read with some of the kids struggling most with reading, I went to work. The dust and dirt, swirling around as we organized the books, and removed the non-book items. While Satiya was removing the books from the bottom shelf I screamed as bugs came swarming out, and the kids laughed. No one is afraid of bugs here. I fell off the seesaw when a big brown spider started heading my way, which everyone found very comical, as Pandi picked up the spider and laughed as it spun webs from his fingers. We pulled out books at the kids reading level and put map books and books about countries in one pile. As Satiya handed me books from the very bottom corner something began moving. She pulled out a book and this time I wasn't the only one screaming. (Ok, I was the only one running out of the library.) It was a nest of huge brown frogs. 'Frog sister! Frog sister!' Everyone was laughing as I stood outside the library. Chella Pandi came in and laying on his stomach, carefully grabbing the frogs with newspaper and tossing them in the garden outside. He caught three, as they hopped into the corners of the library. I guess no one had looked at those books in a while. Little Anand (Karthik) hopped around pretending to be a frog screaming 'Paige Sister! Paige Sister!' for a while, which was funny and sweet. He was a spider for a while after I fell off the seesaw too. That kid is hilarious, and Satiya held my hand so I wouldn't be scared if anymore wildlife appeared during our library cleaning. It generally didn't, if you don't count the kids going wild over who got to read the Dora the Explorer book. Everyone loves Dora here, almost as much as Barbie Girl (everyone's favorite song.) It was sad to see how few books the kids have in Tamil. That's definitely something they need more of. There are maybe 10 small books in Tamil and the rest are pamphlets or Christian comic books sent by missionaries, so there are no books for the older kids, whose English is perhaps not that advanced but should be reading advanced literature in Tamil. All the kids read these comic books about Jesus over and over, because there is nothing else to read in Tamil.
Meanwhile, Kelsey read with some kids. I especially wanted to work on reading in English with MK, who is 10 years old in 5th grade but still can hardly read in English. He knows some words well, but doesn't know what to do words he doesn't recognize besides for guess. I wrote out the whole alphabet, and we went through the sounds that each letter makes several times. We also went through letter combinations like "sh", "ch", and "th". This is hard, as they aren't used to making a lot of these sounds and find a lot difficult. After working on sounds, we built basic words like "cat", "dog", "run", and then slowly applied it to read books. It took a lot of time and hard concentration from both of us. It made me so happy when instead of guessing words he actually sounded it out and got it right occasionally. It's so hard to tell if what I was explaining really got through to him and will help him, but I feel like some progress was definitely made.
After spending all morning reading and cleaning the library, with everyone sneezing and laughing about the frogs, we headed to lunch. After our post-lunch nap and hanging with Reshma for a bit, we went for a beautiful mountain hike with the girls and watched the sky change color over Kanivadi, Dindigal and little Bethania. We talked with the girls about their families and the much awaited Deepavali. Muthumari and Veni told us about their parents and siblings, and where they're from. They were eager to share stories, but had a very sad undertone; its apparent how much they love and miss home and the family they have. Parents and relatives are coming to visit soon to bring gifts for the holiday. After returning to Bethania we played cricket with the boys while the girls sang and danced, practicing for Christmas. (Early right??)
It was a very full day, but beautiful and full. Our last day with all the kids here, before they headed back to school. Last day of holiday! (Don't worry there are many more holidays a coming.) We ended it off with some fun bowling with the girls. We set up 5 empty water bottles down the hall and used a small ball that they rolled to knock it down. Despite a look that may have been interpreted as displeased from the manager's wife, we had tons of fun and laughed the whole time with the girls.


We woke up this morning to spend some time with the kids while they did their morning chores. Girls brought water to the kitchen, boys fed the animals, everyone got themselves ready in their school uniforms and older girls braided the younger girls' hair. After breakfast, at 8.30 all the kids piled into the school bus and left. It was so strange, the very first time that we've been at Bethania without a single child here! It seemed very quiet, even with the multiple animals and staff still there. We spent some time looking at the 2 day old newborn calf. It was very cute, just learning how to walk and make sounds. It amused itself by scaring away dogs that came too close. It was funniest when the field worker, GP, wanted the cow to move so just picked it up, with its four legs kicking, to carry it to its stall.
We did some of our own chores this morning, like burning our garbage. This proved to be way more difficult than we imagined, and went through quite a few matches before we got a flame substantial enough to burn.
We spent several hours sitting outside on the ground with the kitchen ladies, peeling the skin off of hundreds of small onions. As a token of our hard work, our hands still reek of onions! Our friend from the Kodai School, Reshma, left today. We will miss the company and someone else who actually understands everything we say when we speak in English! She was very sweet and the kids enjoyed her company as well.
The kids came home again around 4.30. We had tea with them, then they had chores like washing their school uniforms and had homework to do. It was a much less excited mood than normal though, partially because the kids were tired from their first day back at school. They had all gotten their exam scores back today too, which had been stressful for some.
After their song and bible reading practice and prayer, we did English lessons with the 8th and 9th grade girls. They had told us that they wanted to study grammar. So this afternoon we had hand written all 8 of them a test on contractions. After studying it with them, we had them connect each contraction to its full two words and also fill in some themselves. Most girls found this quite easy, and all did well. We copied some exercises for a English workbook, and came up with some speaking exercises ourselves. After, we had time to hang out with the girls, and they braided our hair and had us draw for them and write our addresses out for them. Muthumari also gave us each 2 of her own bangles- beautiful sky blue and gold ones. It was so sweet. We can't wait for Deepavali festival on October 17th and to give out some of our gifts! It already seems as if time is going by way too fast here!