shopping and colds

I realized I haven't updated in a long while and thought that it would be high time I did. The last couple weeks have been interesting. I tripped walking from Light House to Vathsalya last week and ended up with a bloody knee and a nice sized lump on my leg. Thank God for shots! I was worried I might get something from that, but it's healing nicely and it's merely sore this week. I have come down with a bit of a cold.. and plan to spend a good portion of today sleeping. The weather is changing. It's getting cooler and perhaps that is the reason. Although, I would be more inclined to think it's due to the 20 runny-nosed kids I spend 3 days a week with and my lack of sleep over the past couple weeks. Besides, could I really get a cold when the temperature is going down from 90 to 79? I doubt it. I could not have adjusted that quickly. It's certainly cooler at night, sometimes getting down to the low 60s, but I consider myself blessed because if I were in the US right now it would be in the 30s. I'm grateful for the warmth.

I went shopping on Commercial Street downtown last week! That was exciting. I think I'm getting the hang of talking vendors down. I only did it once. I probably should have for my other purchases, but it didn't end up being a big deal. I bought some beautiful Indian suit material and eventually I'll take it to a tailor to make me the outfit, but I haven't done so yet. That's on my list for next week. (The image is not mine, it's from another blog.. I forgot my camera :( )

Light House is going really well. I love spending time with those kids! I never thought I would ever say something like that, but they truly are a joy. We don't really have verbal conversations since their vocabulary is limited but smiling does wonders. After lunch we have the kids watch tv while we wait for parents to come and this week I've had at least 4 kids try to claim my lap for that half hour. It's amazing how much little kids love touch. It almost seems like they don't really get that kind of attention at home, but I'm sure most of them do.

Tutoring Lakshmi has been going well. I made her flash cards and timed math sheets, and she enjoys both. We started reading Matilda and she seems to enjoy that as well. Last Saturday the orphanage put on an adoptive parents meet, where the kids performed a song and dance to "I can be your friend" from VeggieTales. That was really cute. The rest of the meeting was about adoption, so after the kids' performance we slipped out. On Wednesday I got to the orphanage early and one of the boys was asking me to help him with his Italian (He's going to Italy soon to be with his adoptive parents.) He had language sheets and was asking me how to pronounce the words. The extent of my knowledge of Italian is what I've heard in "Life is Beautiful", and I had a little bit of an idea of pronunciation from French and Spanish. I thought it was funny that he thought I knew the language when I told him a few times that I didn't. But it was fun to hear him practicing.