Day 3

It's only been 3 days? Oh buddy. Feels like 30. I'm still easing into things I guess. Seriously the days here are eternally long. And hot.

This is my favorite part of the day...DINNER! Anything that involves food, I am bound to love. The food here is surprisingly delicious, although I miss my protein something fierce. Dinner is especially cool because we eat it on the roof, and on banana leaves. WHO DOES THAT??!!! It's tight.

Every night from 7:30-9pm we have "family time" with the kids where we read to them and help them with their homework. Last night my new friend wrote my name in tamil on my arm..looks sweet huh?

Today we went to a catholic health clinic. We did things like take vitals, give shots, hand out medications, andddddddd make homemade q-tips out of real live cotton (as opposed to real dead cotton) and bamboo sticks. That's India for ya...being all resourceful and crap. It's amazing, really.

Our group with the catholic nuns and nurses. Their facility was so clean compared to other places we've been!! We felt right at home.

 

Usually we have air conditioned vans that take us places but today we took this little get around....haha we felt like we were getting the most authentic experience possible with this bus (which we all had to get behind and push before it would even start!)  

On our way back from the catholic clinic, our driver randomly decided to visit his vegetable farmer friend. Never caught his name but he was so excited to see 10 white girls visiting his farm. It was absolutely adorable! He was hopping around showing us all the different plants and letting us taste all sorts of funky stuff (my apologies to the toilet tonight).

Cows are sacred in India...but this is about as close as we'll get.

One of the things he grew was sugar cane. He cut some off the stalk and let us peel it and eat it. It was pretty good! He grew everything from bananas to chili peppers. Such an amazing thing to see someone be so self sufficient!

This man was seriously so adorable and excited to show off his land to us americans. Love it!

The catholic clinic today was pretty uneventful, although several incredibly frail and emaciated elderly indians came in to see the doctor for their various problems. I got to work with the doctor and help pass out medications. After the doctor got done with one seriously frail patient, she asked me to help the woman find her seat back in the waiting room. She said, "Never in a million years would this woman dream of an american helping her. I want you to have this experience." It was small, but I'm sure it meant a lot to the lady, as well as to me.

I had another moment with my friend Kim on the bus ride home. I'm just going to call them "Kim moments." But I said to her, "How come I got chosen to live in America with such an amazing life, while these people have been sent to live in a place surrounded by hardship?" She looked at me, and again we started to cry....what did we do to deserve all that we have? We are no better than them.

"Because I have been given much, I too must give."

I don't really get it, and I don't think I'll ever really understand why things happen the way they do, but all I can do is forever live grateful and mindful of others.