Boop!

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. I'll try to catch everyone up with this one. It's been over a month since I came, and I have 2 weeks to go. My feelings about being here have existed on sort of a v-curve so far. On one side, I am getting more and more comfortable here and getting very attached to the children. Simulatanioulsy, I miss home and everyone there more and more as more time goes by.

Kerri and I went to a little seaside town called Mahilibalipurum last weekend. There is a nice beach there on the Bay of Bangal (India Ocean) and some old Hindu cave temples that were really impressive. We watched the World Cup final in a little reataurant and had a great time.

The bad part was that is a a tourist town, so we got harrased by some monkeys (seriously) and some local men. We stayed safe, though. When things got shady, I thought of some great advice our friend Jay gave Hannah, Megan D. and I. We were little activist babies on our way to our first big protest in Georgia and were discussing what to do if we had a run-un with any military police. He looked us dead in the eye and said, "If all else fails, RUN!". Luckily, our trip didn't usually require that.

Things back at Pannai are going well. We have had 3 new kids come in the past 2 weeks or so. It is always exciting when a new kid comes, but I can't help but think of the other side of things. That there is a mother somewhere who's circumstances are so desperate that she has to give her child away. We had a 10 month old girl, Anita, come the other day and it occured to me that she wil have no memory of her bioliogical family at all. There must come a point in for all of the kids when they realize that not everyone lives in a place like this, that some of them have houses and families. Although life here is very simple and often difficult, it is much better than for many people in the nearby villages that I have seen.

It's frustrating because the work we are doing here isn't anything you can really measure. I'm so used to living in a world of syllabi and evaluations that this is a difficult concept to accept. I guess all I can do is try to show them love and acceptance and trust that it might mean something to them. I hope everything is going well for all of you!

I'm never eating rice again,
Cynthia