Home Sweet Home

Sorry I haven't updated recently, the last two weeks or so in India were just mass chaos trying to get everything we needed to complete finished before we left. But I succeeded in finishing all of the projects! James and I built two bookshelves from scratch, painted them, catalogued over 1,000 books for the library, made library cards for all of the students at St. Mary's and teachers, and arranged all of the books in the library space they gave us. So now St. Mary's has a real, workable library, complete with a laptop (I donated my old Villanova one), scanner, and barcodes on the books. The headmistress says she will give the kids a "reading period" every day to take out a book and read it, and all of the 7th graders and up can borrow books whenever they'd like. I am such a huge book-nerd and I think that this is awesome-- kids who had probably never in their lives read a book for fun will now get to take one out every week if they want! Yayyy.

Besides this project I also wrote a health play for the elementary school kids and had one of my Indian friends translate it to Tamil. Then some of the boys we were living with acted out the play, and afterwords all of the kids practiced washing their hands with the hand-soap the program got for them. I bought 10 big bottles of soap, so hopefully it will last them a while. We also bought and organized a much needed first-aid kit for the elementary school.

The last day in India came all too soon. There was a bit of a flurry of activity at the end when we thought our flight might actually be canceled because of the volcanic ash over Europe (bizarre!) but it turned out James and my flight was ok because our layover was in Dubai, not Europe. Our friend and co-intern Sarah was flying British Airways and her flight was actually delayed/canceled until May 1.

It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone at SAMSSS and the schools where we worked. I feel like even though I was there only two months that I have known all of them much longer. Especially the four boys who lived at SAMSSS-- I started calling them my "thambys" (younger brothers in Tamil) and I was their "akka" (older sister). We gave each other parting gifts and we exchange emails every day, but still it feels kind of heart-breaking to be so far away from people I care about so much. Its hard to think of them sleeping on the floor, eating rice every day, and sweating without air-conditioner in the 100 + degree heat of India while I am living up life here in America. If only life were fair for everyone.



But I know that somehow, someway I will see them all again-- my goal is to have enough money someday to buy them all plane tickets to come visit us here when they finish school.

And that pretty much sums up India-- I'm sure I will write more as I continue to adjust to life in America. For right now, its time to move to Washington, D.C.!