October 8th (Bethania's 22nd birthday!)

This morning, because it was our last day at Bethania for a week, we dropped the kids off at school. They were all very excited on the bus, and proud to show off their schools. The girls from 6th Standard up were dropped off first. "Look sister! Super school, sister." They love going to school so much. Its such a difference from most American students who hate on going to school and take their education for granted. After the older girls, all of the younger kids (up to 5th Standard), and then the older boys were dropped off. It was sad to say bye to all of our kids! We got some beautiful goodbye pictures and letters though! They waved goodbye to us as we left their schools on the bus, along side all of their classmates and curious onlookers. Two American girls on a bus filled with Indian school children (not to mention the only people our age not wearing identical blue school uniforms) must have been quite the sight. We get stared at pretty much every time we venture into town. Hahaa. Getting used to it.

After lunch, we drove to Pattyveeranpatty to Chandra's house. We spent the evening visiting her family. We met her nephew's family again, and will see them this weekend at the coffee estate. We also walked a bit further down the road, towards the mountains as the sun started to set, to Vijayasarathy's brother's house. Its so sweet how so many of both of their relatives live on their same road! We met Vijayasarathy's brother, his wife, his son and his daughter-in-law. Rouhini, their son's wife, is a teacher at Chandra's school who we'd spent time with on the school field trip to Thekkary. We enjoyed some spiced crackers and a custard apple, and had nice conversation. We went through our story of our gap year and how we'd ended up in India, what our homes in America were like, the differences between fruit in India and America. They found it funny how in America, it's all about the appearance of food instead of the taste. Though Indian bananas are smaller, browner, often more bruised and don't last as long as the large, artificially yellow bananas common in America, they taste much better. As agriculturalists, they liked to hear what kind of fruit we ate in America, and where it came from. They were interested in what it would take to get more tourists to this region, and want our feedback on that. We impressed them with our limited Tamil knowledge that we've been picking up from the kids as well. Nose, eye, ears, bhindi, hair, sister, mother, thank you, welcome, come, let's go...
We're getting there.
Tomorrow we're teaching lessons at the elementary school, but I miss all our children at Bethania. The youngest boy is 7, love him, and then there are a few 8 year old girls who are very cute and some 9 and 10 year old boys. Most of the boys are 11 to 13 though. So much fun. And then a lot of girls between 11 and all the way up to 18. There are two 18 year old boys as well. 33 kids in total. We can't wait to see them again! We did appreciate our first hot water bucket shower in a while here though!