Sunday, October 18th

This morning we woke up early, even after our late night Deepavali partying, and headed to Chapel. Bethania's beautiful chapel has no walls, just columns holding up the round dome ceiling. There are 13 columns each with the names of the apostles and we kneel on straw mats laid out on the concrete floor. At the front of the round building is an altar with a white stone cross and a painting of an Indian Jesus in flip flops holding a lamb with the Bethania mountains behind him. Today there was no pastor, rather a woman who works near Bethania stood at the front of the chapel, with her young child grabbing her beautiful yellow sari and playing around her bare feet. She read a Bible verse and talked about prayer and when she finished all the kids clapped and she said Thank You. We sang songs in Tamil and prayed and then headed to a late breakfast.

After breakfast, the library was opened and we spent time reading with some of the young girls while the boys did chores (taking care of the animals, breaking up fire wood) and the older girls cleaned out the dining hall. A lot of the girls really need reading practice and just guess words, saying a word they know that starts with the same letter. We're working on it! Paige played some chess with the boys, and the Uno cards came out once again. The boys have been enjoying the toy cars a lot so Paige took out maps and we played games, 'driving' from Kannivadi to Atlanta. India to America. We learned about different continents, oceans and countries while having fun with the cars. After a while we just lined up all our atlas' on the stairs and made ramps for all our new cars.

After a fun lunch outside we spent time with the older girls. Muthumari braided our hair and gave us jasmine strings to wear. I took out my music and danced with the girls before their resting time. They love to dance so much! We've been learning some good Tamil dance moves. Little Muthumari has been showing me "Vijay dance moves!" She's shy about showing them, but once she gets going its great and fun to learn! The favorite songs are still "Right Round" and "Jogi". They also love the "movie"- my one music video on there ("good life" by Kanye). Muniyappan, the oldest boy, has already requested the lyrics to Right Round and Smack That...

Muthumari and Ramya showed me some yoga moves also. They were impressed that I knew some yoga, and invited me to do yoga and meditate with them when they wake up in the morning at 5.30... A bit too early for me! Big Muthumari, Nandhini and Satya also gave me more Tamil lessons. Its difficult, especially trying to guess how to spell words so I can remember them later. I learnt numbers up to 100, and phrases like "I am 17 years old." I learnt how to write my name in Tamil letters. I'm pretty sure that it actually sounds out "Kay- see", but close enough to Kelsey! The girls really seem to love how eager we are to learn Tamil, and love quizzing us.

After tea and biscuits, we went up the mountain with all of the girls. At their request, we brought the music with us, and they danced the whole way up while fighting over who got to hold it. It seemed surreal to be dancing Indian dance moves on a mountain overlooking Bethania as the sun began to set. Gorgeous scenery and the best company.

After, it was the boys turn to listen to music, dance and take a ridiculous amount of pictures. They loved to look at all the photos on my i Pod, zooming in and out of each one. Satish was very impressed with the calculator application. They boys had the best dance moves- the classic Indian hip thrust, jumping up and down, holding hands and swinging in and out. They love the song Gasolina, and other Spanish songs a lot. Little Karthi and Akash were breaking it down. Muniyappan spun Akash around by his arms. Sethu jumped in every single picture that he could, always flashing some hand signs and his adorable smile. MK and other boys wrapped themselves up in the man skirts that all men wear here, making full body robes. The older boys made a big human pyramid that was successful for a short time. We ended of the night with slightly calmer Uno and Chess to cool down from music and dancing excitement. We love that we can do something simple like playing music and it can have such an amazing effect, making these kids so happy.