Overnight and Diwali

October 28, 2008
This past week I finally got into a rhythm. I had my math tutoring then computer classes until lunch then one more class and then I spent the rest of the doing other work. In India they still have class on Saturday, so Sunday was my day off. Slept in which was nice. I went over and played with the babies and at around ten Hafeez came to the school to pick something up. I decided to tale advantage of this and asked him to drive me to 2nd hostel. I had some clothes that I wanted to hand out and they had been asking me all the time to sleep over with them. I packed an over night bag and the clothes and Hafeez dropped me off. The kids were in their last few minutes if Sunday school so I waited in the medicine room. As soon as Sunday school was over, everyone came over and surrounded me. Whenever I go to a hostel, I feel like a celebrity. Everyone wants to be next to me and to talk to me. They all ask me to sit with them at meals and asked that I sleep next to them. I set up in the playroom to start handing out cloths that were donated by local people. Most of the clothes are quite little. I had the girls come first. I would call out a girls name and I would hold up a piece of clothing to see if it almost fit. Then they go into another room were the older girls were helping them try them on to make sure that it actually fit. I was actually pretty good guessing if it was going to fit or not. I gave as many as I could to these Sishu Viha kids. Sishu Viha is a government orphanage, and once these kids were found to be HIV positive, they were sent to Agape. Because they are complete orphans, with no relatives, they get no new cloths from them on their birthday or during festivals, so I gave the most to them. The clothes that didn’t fit any of them I gave to some of the other girls. I then started with the boys. I had basically no pants, and that is what they really need, but I gave away a bunch of shirts. Within about 15 minutes after I finished with the shirts, one of the little boys was wearing his new shirt and it ripped. After I finished handing out the clothes, I had batches in the playroom. They are batched together based on age, so they are playing with similar toys. The first batch was a little crazy because there are so many little kids but they were very cute. There were five batches, and each got a half an hour in the playroom. This finished at around 4:30 and then it was the girls time to shower. They all shower every morning, but twice a week in the afternoon they take another, where they get to wash their hair. We then played for a while before dinner. Everyone then got read for bed. I decided to sleep with the older girls. In India pretty much everyone sleeps on the ground on mats. The kids got out their mats and they all basically slept on top of each other. Not because there wasn’t enough room, I think it was more for the sense of company and safety. I wasn’t really prepared for this, so even though the lights were shut off at about 9, I couldn’t fall asleep until about 2:30. I then was woken up at 5:30 by one of the youngest girls, Saivithri, who was poking me in the back. Only a couple of other girls were up, who were sweeping and cleaning the hostel. At around 6 everyone woke up and said their morning prayer before they brushed their teeth and took their shower. I decided to wait until I got back to the house to shower. The older girls helped everyone with their hair and then we had breakfast. After breakfast we played a little more before the bus came. I took the bus with the kids and took my shower and got ready to tutor. Monday was he same schedule as the week before. Today is Diwali the morning was normal, but at 3:30 guests came to celebrate Diwali with the kids. Diwali is celebrated similarly to the 4th of July. Fireworks, sparklers, lights are everywhere and will continue long into the night. The guests were from the Civil Service Program, the same people that came before, but there were about 20 of them. It seemed that everyone had fun. They handed out snacks and gave he kids sparklers and set off small fireworks. They left at around 6:30 after a fun filled couple of hours.