It seems like forever since my fingers have stroked the keyboard to write in the cyber pages of my blog! My life has been rather routine the past few weeks, what with waking up everyday for office and either making those videos for the children or helping with the paperwork and writing letters to different presidents, and then eating, sleeping, and trying not to catch any more little crawly critters from the children. Unfortunately I haven't been able to visit the children too much because of a stomach problem (I think I ate some bad food in Kolkata) and I've been a little frightened to catch more lice than I already have. What a great gift from the children- the itchy dance!
But you know the videos I've been making? I've completed two: one about different winter holidays to increase religious awareness and another about different cultures, foods, dress, music, etc. around the world to expose them to the vast riches of human life across the globe. I titled it One World and it starts out by showing all 7 continents with pictures of various cultural activities and ends with one slide title "One world..." followed by pictures of our amazing planet Earth. It's a really neat video that I have yet to copy to DVD to show the children, so when I do, I'll definitely let you darling dears know what they think. And I wish I could show you all the video, but the intermittent power and internet outages won't permit me to upload my videos on the world wide web, but believe me, I've tried and tried again!
This past week has been even more exciting than anything that's been going on for the past few weeks. We've been preparing for our new VSSU family member, who I picked up with Jagadish-da (VSSU's driver) from the airport last Saturday. Her name is Erin (I know coincidence, right? Everyone has been a bit confused as to whether my sister Erin is coming!) and she is from New Jersey, originally Korea. We slept literally almost our entire Sunday holiday the next day, her exhausted from the airplane trip and me with that pesky restaurant devil inside my stomach! Tuesday, Mr. Mondal took us to Sunderban, the largest mangrove forest in the world, for the opening ceremony of another branch of VSK renewable energy center, partnered with VSSU. It's really ground-breaking (literally, because there is no electricity in this area) and quite exciting that people are working to sustainably develop these parts. While it may seem like an unfortunate thing that the area is so poor that there is absolutely no electricity (except for the generator at the hospital), the opportunity to develop the community in a way like this is super-duper awesome and hopeful!
The following day, so many guests poured into VSSU to celebrate Swami Vivekananda's birthday, also celebrated as National Youth Day. Of course, since we're in India, you can expect the celebrations to be grand and delicious. The day began around 7:30 AM and lasted until 10:30 PM, really an all-day sort of affair. The only suggestion I would have for such a lovely day would be to shorten it; it was a little exhausting! All sorts of activities and competitions for the children in the area packed the program: running (of which I followed on the back of a motor-bike with one hand gripping on for dear life and the other with a video camera), drawing, gymnastics performances, singing, dancing, dramas, you name it. I participated in two events: the marble-spoon race (definitely not my best sport... I dropped the marble) and musical ball, which is like musical chairs but the women that played just passed a ball around and were "out" when the music stopped. I'm pretty talented at this game of luck; I won second prize!! Actually, I think I really was first, but I didn't argue. Even Mr. Mondal's son said the next day that I was first. No biggie though, I have a new stainless steel thermos as a souvenir from the day!
My favorite part of the day was seeing the children perform their dances and songs (and the tasty food, thank goodness my stomach was cured). They're so talented and I hope they know it! There were even some contemporary Indian dances, a-hip and a-hopped out by the children from the government school next-door to the Home for Children. One song they danced to reminded me of a time ten or eleven years ago when I first fell in love with Indian culture. Their dance number was from the movie Lagaan, which was first shown to me by my Auntie (thanks for showing us such a wonderful 3 hour movie to us Aunt Gina). I was intrigued about this new part of the world that I'd never seen before, and was curious to read a book called Shiva's Fire. It was while I was reading this book in the car traveling to a vacation in Colorado and listening to the sounds of the tabla, violins, and sweet voices that I fell in love. Next time I'll post some pictures of all these events, but in the meantime go and watch Lagaan and tell me what you think! Until next time (and there aren't too many more left before I come home), take care and smell lots of flowers and eat lots of sunshine!
