The India Chronicles: Our day-to-day. Letter #9

We do go on all sorts of crazy adventures here, especially on weekends. But the whole purpose of my trip to India is to serve, and help where I can. I get a lot of questions about day-to-day activities. Quite frankly a lot of it is being flexible and changing plans last minute because of the nature of volunteer work, and general communication differences in India, but our team is always up for the challenge.

An example of one of our projects is the Bridge Camp. We work with a school for girls who were previously in child labor situations. They are so sweet and so adorable and so loving. Every time we walk through the doors they greet us with ginormous smiles, and that outrageously darling head bobble. "sista! sista!" Now they remember my name, "A!" bobble "A" It's the cutest thing in the world. 

We've been starting a program where on Tuesdays we teach them a little bit of English, and then do a dance. They are fabulous dancers. Truly one of the most fun moments/days of my life.

That next Thursday when we arrived at the camp, we got swarmed with a hundred smiling faces all saying, "Hello sisters! Dance! Dance! Dance!" and they put hands together and moved their heads back and forth like we did in the dance we taught them, “Dance? Dance?” It was so adorable.

On Thursday, were there to teach a lesson on women’s health and empowerment. The four girls in our team split the lesson up, while using our rockstar translator, Nivruthi. We taught for about an hour a campaign entitled “proud to be a girl.” About goal setting, basic menstruation facts and health, and just a general women empowerment conversation. Another really fulfilling moment. It was great to collaborate as a team, and use our teaching experience to share a really worthwhile message. The Indian people are very modest, in every sense of the word. They're very aware of even their conversation, which I greatly respect. It was cool that we, as foreigners, could bring up the sometimes uncomfortable topic of women's health that those girls might not have gotten so directly. 

We also get the chance to teach women at a night shelter English so they could get a job. We went to the shelter the other day, and no one was there. The worker said, "They're all gone. They've all gotten jobs." So that was wonderful! It was sad that we won't be able to teach them anymore, we'd developed some friendships, but I'm so proud and happy for them that they now have work. 

We're on a few other projects for publicity about child marriage and child labor, and awareness for unnecessary surgeries, etc. We have really incredible local partners from whom I'm learning so much by the chance to work with them. 

Things change daily, projects are dropped and picked up all the time. But we're always looking for more opportunities to work and serve and help out among these incredible communities. 

Also, As I was writing this, a sweet little girl found me and my Nutella in a back corner during sunday school. She was thrilled by the chocolate and the pictures, so we indulged in both. :)