Vathsalya

Monday was a beautiful day! It rained for the majority of the weekend, and when the sun peeked through the clouds Monday morning and revealed the glorious day it would be, Cindy and I were pretty excited about it. We decided to take the kids from the orphanage to the park. The office was closed Monday, so only the five children that live at the orphanage were there. The others are in foster care and because of the holiday and office closure they stayed home. We walked to the park which took about ten minutes with all the children wanting to walk holding our hands in a long line.. this did not please the cars and two-wheelers that wanted to get around us, but we managed. Now, the "park" consisted of a tall double slide. There were stairs and a slide on each side that formed a triangle with a small platform at the top. Also there were two see-saws. This was the park. I played on the see-saw with the kids for a bit.. they thoroughly enjoyed my panicked expressions every time they had me up in the air and suddenly let me drop. On more than one occasion I had a vision of myself falling backwards or getting knocked off and seriously injuring myself as the seats were inadequate and I felt far from safe, but I'm still alive in one piece. After I had enough of that, I decided to go on the slide. The kids were having fun on that so joining in seemed like it could be a good idea. The slide was steep. Really steep. It was only about ten-twelve feet long, but it looked like one could pick up a lot of sleep if he/she wasn't careful. Also, at the bottom of the slide, unlike the gradual stop that the slides come to, the stop was abrupt. The harsh angle of the slide met a piece of metal parallel to the ground with no curve. It was a solid angle. When I sat down at the top, I needed a few seconds to prepare myself and figure out how I was going to arrive at the bottom uninjured. Unfortunately, I had not been watching the kids closely enough to see how they did it when they got to the bottom. Well, in the middle of my contemplation, one of the kids decided he wanted to go with me, so he sat down behind me and gave us a bit of a shove, because obviously I was taking too long! We went sailing down the slide, my hands gripped to the edges to try to slow us down, and came to an abrupt stop at the bottom. Ouch. I can still feel where I hit. I'm not doing that anymore. I later learned that I should have stopped myself with my feet.. that information would have been incredibly helpful before I started down the slide... It was a fun day and it was very enjoyable to watch the kids laughing and playing. They are such joys.

-Anappa and Lakshmi, Lakshmi is the girl I have been tutoring

-Anappa and Naveen.. and in the lower corner is Ashwath

-Anappa and me

My first day

I have arrived! I came in on time yesterday morning, just before 4am. My intention was to stay up for the flight to London and sleep the whole way to Bangalore, but that did not work out as well as I had hoped. I slept for about three hours total for both flights. There was a bit of a mixup at the airport because the internet was providing people with misinformation about my flight which resulted in my ride not showing up until an hour after I landed. But, it was fine, because she arrived. I knew she would. I have learned though, that the worst question for me to be asked when I am overwhelmed is "How are you?". I break down in tears. That was interesting. I plan on getting more sleep from now on.
There are so many people on the roads. On the way back from the airport there were mostly truckes on the main roads, but when we went to the orphanage in the afternoon there were so many people - LOTS of people - walking along the roads, going in and out of shops, crossing the road... there were cyclists, scooters, motorcycles, buses, trucks, cars, vans, all trying to fit five lanes of traffic into the three marked lanes. I am amazed at how well the drivers know the size of their vehicles. I was thinking that if people back home knew that, or had the confidence of Indian drivers, I-5 traffic problems may soon be solved.. of course, there is still the whole police and rules thing.. I don't know if there are many rules here. Everyone drives on the left side of the road. That was quite the experience. I mean, the whole driving in traffic was an experience. There wasn't anything familiar about it.
I saw a waterbuffalo meandering on the side of the road yesteday while we were driving. That may have been the most shocking thing I saw because it was so unexpected. There were a lot of stray dogs on almost every road. Cindy said that they expect either to be beaten or ignored and that made me very sad. If I wanted to make friends with any of them I probably could, but they are diseased and I shouldn't want to touch them.
We went the the orphanage yesterday where Lakshmi lives. I will be tutoring her this year in English and Math so it was nice to meet her the day that I arrived. She is very sweet. All of the kids at the orphanage are sweet. I tried to help her with her math. She's learning long division. I learned that I'm terrible at explaining things especially when I think there is a language barrier. I need to refrain from thinking that she does not speak the same language as me. She knows English fairly well and I shouldn't think that she can't understand what I'm saying. After she finished her homework she read me a story in Kanata. She translated it for me, but I felt like I was missing something. I knew what was happening, but I didn't know why things were happening in the story. But the language was beautiful.