Winter Cleaning

January 11, 2009
Friday we went to 2nd hostel to clean the playroom. We went on the school bus and played with the kids for a while until Lynne arrived with the playroom keys. The room was a mess all the bins of toys were all mixed up pieces of games were missing. We spent from 9 in the morning until 1 cleaning. About halfway through Sheila came to help. Marion and I spent at least a half an hour putting clothes on the hundreds of naked Barbies and baby dolls. We found at least 100 battleship pegs in random bins. After we finished sorting all the toys we swept it and washed the floors. At 1 we took a break for lunch. And after lunch we brought the kids in to play in groups of about 8. They all seemed to enjoy it. We then went back on the bus to 3rd hostel. We were all so exhausted we ended up taking a nap. We went down to the kitchen area were Lynne and all the older girls were sitting in huge piles of donated clothes making sure that it was acceptable and the sorting it into hostels. We helped a little bit and then went to have dinner.

Yesterday was “bright and white day” were we spent the day cleaning the school. Only the older boys and girls came. They were split up into pairs and each group tackled one room. Amy, Marion, and I were put on the task of organizing the office and then the storage room. The office was a mess. There were piles of random books in all the corners and old exam papers everywhere. We decided to separate the books by class and put them on the one set of shelves. We ended up with a ton on trash. We then went to the storage area, which we couldn’t even walk into. It was hard to even know were to start. However, by the end you could actually see all that was in there and walk in with room to spare. After we finished with that nightmare we saw what all the kids were doing. It was amazing how much dirt was coming off the floors. After a little while we went over to play with the babies. We didn’t get back to the hostel until 7:30. We brought all the kids even hostel 2 boys and 4 girls to 3rd hostel because we planned in starting family game night. We had actually planned on letting the boys at hostel 1 to have the first chance to play but because the kids worked so hard to day Lynne decided to have just the kids that worked to play. We all had dinner and then went downstairs were Lynne was sorting the cloths the other night and we broke up into 10 groups of 4. We played games like UNO, Life, Rummy, Business which is the Indian version of Monopoly, and other games like that. It was a lot of fun and I think that the kids really enjoyed it. We ended up playing until almost 12. Amy was not feeling well; she had shooting pains in her ears and then she burst an eardrum, so she didn’t end up playing.

Today is very relaxed. Amy still is not feeling much better but I think that she is not in as much pain as last night. We hung out in the room for a while reading and writing. After lunch Lynne and Ratnam arrived and we went over to 1st hostel. We had planned on taking the older boys to 6th hostel to play at the volleyball net outside, but Lynne got started handing out batteries for the Christmas toys but then got side tracked, checking and distributing clothes. While she was doing that Dan, Shiva, Varun, and I played badminton in the boys yard. It got quite intense and Ratnam ended up coming in and it got even more intense. It was quite fun and it was nice to get some exercise.