Friday, November 6th

After the kids left this morning, we worked in the field for a while with GP, while it drizzled on us. We collected bucket, after bucket of stones. It's good that the fields are turning green again with the rain and we don't have to pump that well dry anymore trying to carry water. It was the third day of rain, which is so good, we need it! So many plants have died in the drought, including the coconut trees planted last year.

We were so happy and surprised when the kids came home very early from school, at 3.30. We had even more time to play! And it was great, the sun came out in the afternoon so a lot of cricket games were played. We brought out our new tennis balls to play with, splashing in the mud. Nithiya was very excited to play several different versions of catch with the mini soccer ball- smacking it back to me with her palm, making a bat out of her fists to hit it back to me. It was fun, she has so much energy! We played chess, with the new board we bought in Madurai too and taught a new card game! There was much excitement about 'Go Fish!' with the new playing cards. It was so much fun, laughing, screaming, and policing several very intense games of 'go fish!' The nail polish came out again, we had our nails painted and re-painted by the kids. The boys painted their nails red and blue too, along with the girls. It was fun having all the kids lined up under the covered hallway while it rained again and they played chess, Uno, cards, painted nails... They fought for who was going to play chess next, while little Anand yelled while changing colors in the Uno game "Very, very... GREEN!", and while Muga did whatever it took to make sure no one saw her hand of cards. We later looked through our pictures on the cameras with the girls. All the kids want me to show them the pictures I have of them and their families on Deepavali. It's so sad that most of them don't have pictures of their family to look at. Ramya was so excited to see the photo of her, her brother Sethu and her grandparents (Patti and Tata!)

A huge food delivery came in a truck tonight, which the kids told us was "Food King sister!" After evening prayer, which was interrupted by everyone trying to get a particularly huge bug out of the hall, we had a boys' lesson. We played charades- having them act out words like giraffe, elephant, sleeping, eating, dancing, apple, chess, Uno. We had them spell the word after they'd guessed it too. It was a good activity and they seemed to enjoy it, though its really hard to figure out who got the answer first with all of them yelling, jumping and running around! Some of the older boys could spell easily, while some other younger boys like Sethu had trouble even repeating the letters after we'd told them how to spell it.

We had a good chapati dinner, filled up our water buckets for our shower outside in the dark, and sat out taking pictures and talking with the girls for a little while before heading to sleep!