"You will always be here".

Hello Everyone!

I can't believe it's November and I have less than one month here. These past two weeks I have come to realize just how soon I will be leaving and to be quite honest, although writing this blog has helped me process the whole experience, I'm having a very difficult time writing about what has been going on around here; I'm probably thinking too much about what these months have meant all together and its difficult to pin point specifics. I'm overwhelmed. The kids however, help me to keep smiling every day.

In my fourth grade class, there is a new sort of understanding that I am leaving soon, so we have all cranked up the sweetness, and they are certainly paying more attention, trying to be in conversation with me all class long, even if it means talking about fractions or the planets' orbits around the sun. I have come to know every child on a personal level. I won't mention all eighteen of them but for example, there is Harish whose smile and sweetness warms my heart each morning. There is Vijay, the charismatic and clever one; his expressions and jokes could make anyone laugh. There is Hannah who has beautiful, curious eyes and whose silence is never awkward, it's often the most amazing sound amongst the constant commotion of my classroom. There is persuading Ajay, whose puppy faces when apologizing make me crumble like a warm cookie. And Bhavana whose voice always fills me with empathy as I see her squishing her eyes together as she struggles through her stutter. And as such, I could say something about each one; I have yet again been given the chance to love, and what better than with 18 amazing children.

Then there are the sixth graders who have confided in me many sad stories as we try to find healing in trustworthiness and community. They enjoy our Wednesday night classes very much but at the end of the class they all lower their chins, wrinkle their foreheads and a few of them come up to me and say: "Only three more classes left. Will you always remember us"? "I will, I always will". With them I am leaving a part of me, one that wishes to always be there for them as they continue striving to deal with their traumas.

Every morning after breakfast I have about a half hour to kill before school starts, so from 8:00 to 8:25 I hang out in the music room with Ragini, a passionate piano player from the 11th grade. He loves playing songs from the musicals "Wicked" and "Les Miserables". I have tried my best to sing along. He appreciates my effort and says that he doesn't mind the raspy sounds of my injured vocal cords. I suggested he learn my favorite Chopin piece, Prelude in E minor, he learned it really well, and these days he plays it and I dance...we both appreciate our mutual love for music and art. Everyday as he closes up the piano, we say "It's only 8:25 in the morning but thank you for making my day". One morning I came in, not as my usual self, I was sad; it was exactly three weeks until my flight away from India. He said: "Blue Jay, why would you be sad? You cannot possibly be sad if you think about all the great things you have taught us. And also, just because you will not be here physically does not mean you will not be here with us; you will always be here". *Tear*

Also, this week I informed the school during morning assembly about all the horrible things happening in Nicaragua. I was honest with them and told them that I was really sad and really worried but that fortunately my family and friends were all okay. It was comforting when child by child, for the rest of that day, came up to me saying that they were sorry to hear about the news in "my country" and that they would keep NicaWagua and my family in their prayers. These children, though they have many different religious backgrounds and though the school is secular, they all seem to be truly spiritual; it is a privilege to witness such spirituality in people so young.

On a less emotional note, I have finally found the adequate way to explain to the 4th graders the concept of time in terms of am and pm, grant it, we have been working on "time" for about two weeks. "Okay lets try to understand this by talking about your daily schedule. You wake up at 6 am, you get dressed, go to breakfast, then you go to school for so long; you have EIGHT total periods with lunch in between, it seems like classes go on forever. Then after school, you go for physical training and then you all shower and watch videos as you wait for dinnertime. During all those activities the clock is ticking...tick, tock, tick tock. 12 WHOLE HOURS have passed..." I then did the same for their night schedule and explain for how many hours they actually sleep. It was as if they "saw the light"... they grew two inches taller as they sat up straight, feeling like they could reach the ceiling with this new discovery, this new knowledge. I'm almost sure that moments like these are when a teacher says: "This is why I teach"; it was awesome.

Speaking about the kids we celebrated children's day last Friday and the presentation that the volunteers, the teachers and the housemothers put together was great. The kids truly enjoyed themselves for the whole hour and a half. They would take quick breaths between hysterically laughing and forgetting to breath from excitement during the parts that were "soooo nice" (an overused phrase around here). We did our "teacher dance" to a mix that included Thalia and Michael Jackson, yeah quite the wacky duo, but there was a whole story line about how one dance was more "appropriate" than the other, it was funny. We also put together a skit, where Snow White was actually a man and when the dwarfs thought he was dead, they acted out a typical Tamil mourning ceremony; the kids couldn't stop laughing. I also danced an up beat piece, and every time I jumped or would do some sort of stretch, with my bad wheel and all, they would all go, "wooooah", out load; it was really cute.

Mr. Raman and Mrs. Runu Roy

After the Children's day presentation, Suparna and I headed to Bangalore for my last weekend in the city. We stayed at Suparna's family's place. This time the apartment was of an older couple whose two daughters live in the United States. You can tell the parents miss them terribly. They are amazing people, they cooked us typical Indian home-style meals, and we had tea in the afternoons and conversed for hours. The gentleman was very interested in Nicaragua as I was in their Indian life. On Saturday, they drove us to a huge book fair where we bought good books for the school library at one-fourth their price. We then went to an "Indian mall" which I had yet to go to and my goodness; it's a different India in there. It's seriously just like Valley Fair (for my Cali friends) or Dadeland (For my non-Cali friends), except some women wear saris and it smells like spices. Anyways we had lunch at the food court, and the food was actually really good, Indian food can be really complex but it can also be very simple and just as good. Then the lady bought both Suparna and I really cute wooden bracelets with Indian designs on them...how sweet is that?

Mr. Raman is a very knowledgeable man who retired a few years ago after working some techy job between Boston and Bangalore for most of his life. He is totally anti-development and anti-west, while accepting the flaws of his Indian sub continent and its dirty cities. He reminded me of that character in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", the father who thought the Greeks invented everything in this world. Similarly, Mr. Raman thinks American commercialism is greedy and unnecessary and that their fatty foods pale in comparison to amazing, tasty, scrumptious Indian food, which by they way he says, takes way more time to make than any western food and must therefore be much better. He finished his comments (which his wife, referred to as lectures, haha) with a "so, derr it tis". The Roys are most definitely two of my favorite Indians.

Me Time
Although I am actually savoring every bite of spiciness these days during the three meals, occasionally, a really cute and chubby child awakens inside of me asking for a pinch of sweet. Well, the child got so pushy that I ended up climbing a 12-foot papaya tree and cutting down a papaya. I wrapped it in newspaper and patiently waited a couple days for it to ripen, promising the child in me that it would be the sweetest papaya we ever tasted. Oh, it was so sweet.

A usual sight here, past 6 pm, is bugs, tons and tons of bugs. We are in the middle of a "dry jungle plateau" sort of, which apparently is a bug paradise. Insects, some noisy and small, some large and strange, suddenly appear like ideas in the evenings. Some burn themselves in the energy-saving light bulbs we have the privilege to use when there is power, while others just, well, bug. A couple nights ago, as I was typing away on my computer, a large praying mantis came flying straight at my face. I freaked out and almost threw my computer to the floor as I tried to jump off the bed. The mantis decided to land and chill right on my pillow. After a few girly, pitchy screams, I called in another volunteer to take it outside with a cup and book. The whole time I could only think about how they chop their mate's heads off and thought that they must be just as violent with humans; I'm sure it felt very unwanted.

I started reading a new book, it's written by an Indian author, Arundhati Roy and it is titled The God of Small Things. It was acclaimed internationally and so far I'm enjoying it very much. So yeah in my short spare time, I read sometimes and sometimes I sit and stare and drink coffee and think too much...I love it; decompression at its finest.