"Sister!!!"

Today was jam packed with loud kids and fun adventures, like usual.
After a lovely breakfast with our new friend from the Kodai school, who is a senior there, we opened up the library for some reading time.
It's quite fun in an overwhelming, always moving and loud kind of way. I sat inside the library, finding good books for kids at their different levels, reading with them and making sure everyone understood putting away books properly. (We're still working on that one.) The kids are really sweet though, and want to do the right thing, (especially if you're watching.) We went through removing coloring books and American college advertising packets from the 80's that really don't belong in the library.
It's been really fun working with the kids about geography. They are very excited about learning about the world and love looking at the pictures in books and connecting them to the map. I'm kind of wishing we thought to laminate the map before leaving with all the dirt, little finger prints and aggressive pointing, it's seen better days for sure. Today while cleaning the library with our new friend from Kodai International, we found a bunch of World Book Encyclopedias. It was a bit disappointing to discover they were from 1978, but I still think we'll have some lessons on how to use them, even if they are exceptionally outdated. The kids really do enjoy learning about the world. Today after locating the World Books, our first order of business was continuing our dialogue about Pakistan and Kashmir and how not everyone in Pakistan is a terrorist. I looked up Pakistan in the P book with some of the boys, while they fed the geese and dogs. We sat on the dirt and looked at pictures of Pakistani men working in the fields, a beautiful smiling woman and little boys around their same age studying in school. There were photographs of beautiful mountains and old men. One of the boys asked me 'Where are the soldiers? Where is the fighting?' It's hard really to know what to say. What's the right thing to say?
We learned about the different continents today with the 3rd through 6th grade girls. There was a lot of confusion and for a bit of time, Africa and Australia were getting confused and Europe was only referred to as 'London!' Or sometimes 'native place of Sister Ella!' (another volunteer that has been here from Europe. Shout out to Ellinor!) We'll have to go over it more tomorrow but it's definitely something important to know. Talking about countries and continents was a lot easier with the older boys, but the little girls were all very excited to learn. We're having to watch out for some of the girls bullying other little girls though. Today Satiya told us, 'Priya is angry, sad.' Because apparently Nandini has scribbled all over her paper where we were writing the names of continents. It's good that they are learning the different emotions in English that we hung up on the wall, but some people still need to learn about manners and being nice. It's hard for these kids because there is very little supervision or direction with their personal interactions among each other. They all just want that attention and love so bad. They are all really sweet kids with their own special personalities, and like all little kids, they could use some direction and love.
This evening we went to Saturday market with the two oldest boys, (Muniapan and Cheniya) older Karthi and baby Akash and of course the bus driver. We went to the center of Kannivadi, which has a Hindu temple, a church and a collection of grass huts. In the center there was the Saturday vegetable market full of beautiful, colorful vegetables laid out on the ground and shoppers walking around with the salespeople sitting on the ground weighing and yelling and of course, everyone staring at Kelsey and I. Muniapan laughed, 'everyone looking you!' Yes. At least it appeared no one had remembered their camera to document our ridiculousness. All the salespeople seemed to love baby Akash, who is the 5 year old son of the manager of Bethania. The tomato woman picked him up, kissed him repeatedly and then gave him a tomato and ten rupees. He is pretty cute. Karthi who is about 11, Akash, Kelsey and I ventured out on our own for a bit while the others bargained over huge bags of onions, tomatoes, potatoes and other unknown vegetables. We were swept up in the crowd, almost loosing sight of our little guides a couple times, with the smells and noise, food and music and people surrounding us. But luckily Karthi's little voice called out, 'sister!' And we crossed the busy street with him to buy chocolate. Akash of course, already had chocolate, so we bought some for Karthi and our own secret stash and headed back. It was quite an enjoyable trip to the sweet town center and we hopped back on the bus with our giant bags of potatoes and onions and headed home, I mean Bethania.