Living at SAMSSS (with a priest and 5 boys he cares for, and a cook, and a bunch of other random people) is hectic. There is always someone coming or going, and always someone who wants to chat or show you something. Being foreigners, Sarah, James, and I are constant objects of curiosity. Pretty much whenever I am outside of my or James’ room doing anything, like reading, or typing on my computer, or writing a lesson plan, I have people standing over my shoulder, trying to say hello and start a conversation in broken English, or staring at me expectantly. It is so hard to just get a quiet moment to myself, mostly because I never want to say no or stop hanging out with these wonderful people who are always around. And even when everything is quiet, say around midnight, there are usually 3 or 4 people sleeping on the floor right outside Sarah and my room—they’re everywhere!
Seenu in particular has captured my heart. He is the 9 year old little boy I wrote about previously. He speaks a fair bit of English (usually just single words, but you can figure out what he means) and somewhere along the way someone must have tried to teach him “its”. So now, instead of saying “It’s sleeping” he has abbreviated it to “S-Sleeping” or “s-going?” or “sa-cat”. It is so adorable that we don’t even correct him, we say “Yep, that’s right Seenu, we’re s- going for now, but we’ll be back later”. It’s really bad, I guess at some point we’re going to have to start correcting him if he is ever going to learn English, but for now it’s just about the cutest thing ever.
Poor Seenu usually sleeps on the floor, but Sarah put him to bed the other night on a cot in the living room. He must have slept fitfully and sometime during the night or early morning he managed to fling himself out of the bed onto the concrete floor. They found him in the morning curled up under the kitchen table. His leg really hurt where he fell off the cot so Father Felix took him to the hospital. There they gave him two shots (no one seems to be really sure for what?) and sent him home with a bunch of medicine. Father Felix was away for the night and Seenu ate with us interns. Afterwards he pulls out a brown bag of medicine given to him by the doctor. Inside are 4 different pills, and Seenu claims that he is supposed to take them all that night. There is no label or anything to indicate what they are, and this is a 50-some pound kid we’re talking about. We were all concerned and called Father Felix to make sure that was right he was supposed to be taking these pills, and he confirmed. The Indian medical system is crazy! Apparently they just hand stuff out to make people feel like they’ve received some sort of treatment—two shots and 4 different pills just for a bruised leg. Goodness. The kid should have just taken some Tylenol! And then poor Seenu had a stomach ache and diarrhea the next day, no wonder.
Another crazy thing happened yesterday. I came home from working at the after-school program in the evening, around 6:30, to hear Father Felix talking about a cow in the well. Turns out that one of the cows we have here at SAMSSS (there are about 4 or 5 that live behind the house and whose milk we have every day) fell into a well! They had to lift her out with rope and a crane, but luckily the poor thing was ok. She was pregnant and maybe lost the baby because she probably has some cracked ribs, but the thing that can kill a cow is a broken leg and her legs seem to be ok. Always something going on here at SAMSSS.
On a very positive note, the one library I’ve been working on at Periathachoor is up and running! So far the kids love it and have been great at taking good care of their books and returning them safe and sound and on-time. The library I’m working on at St. Mary’s will be operational starting tomorrow morning, so that is also a huge success in a place where even the simplest tasks inexplicably take hours, days, or weeks longer than planned. 
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