Family time and the kids

So Rising Star is a boarding school, and all the kids live in "families" in the hostels on one side of campus. There are four boy families and four girl families. Every evening they have "Family time," and the volunteers go over and hang out with the kids before they go to bed. It's really just a time to hang out and have fun. I also do some reading with one boy, Arun, who's struggling a bit with his english, so I read with him for 10-15 minutes every night just to give him a chance to practice a bit more. I'm living in the Tamil Nadu district of India, and here everyones first language is Tamil. Thats pretty much the only language that the leprosy patients speak, and the younger kids really don't know a whole lot of english yet. Learning english is a very important part of their education. I'll have to post a good picture of Arun sometime. He's my buddy. He's a really good kid.

Anyway, so the other day at family time, I learned how to play Carrom Board. One awesome kid, Steven, kept telling me to come over so he could show me "cannonball" at least thats what I thought he was saying, and I was very confused. Turns out he wanted to show me this Indian game called Carrom board. It's kinda of like a variation of pool or billiards, but instead of balls you have little discs that you flick with your fingers. Here's the board when its set up to start playing. The white disc is the shooter, and the kids let me "break". I shot the disc at the pile and made the discs go flying.

The kids were really great at teaching me how to play. There are four players. One on each side, and when its your turn to shoot you place the disc somewhere along the bar on your side of the board. The first game I played, I lost terribly! (surprise, surprise). But the kids want me to come back and play with them some more (probably so they can beat me).
Since I was so bad, ne of the boys was always on my team helping me set up my play and telling me which disc to aim for. They were awesome. They actually had me play a whole game by myself just so I could have more chances to practice. They were really cute. and the game is fun!
I also see the kids during school. I'm with them Monday-Thursday teaching English, supervising their computer class, tutoring math and teaching dance. It's a busy schedule, but I'm enjoying it so far, and I have a lot to learn about how the school operates. Still learning my schedule for sure. A couple times during the day, we take a break, and these two girls decided we should take some pictures posing. I don't really know them yet, and I can't even remember their names. IT's so hard to learning 180 indian children's names!
These are 2 of the girls who are 5th standard. I teach them english. They can be trouble makers, but I look forward to working with them and teaching them.
So those are a few of the kids. More to come I guarantee :)

Diwali

Happy Diwali! Yesterday, was such a fun day. The kids had no school, so they were super excited. Instead of school, we had them do an art project for their sponsors (they decorated paper picture frames) and after a crazy rainstorm in the afternoon we had fireworks in the evening. They got all dressed up in their nicest clothes and we had a wonderful day!

Some of the girls working on their picture frames.

Bugi, one of the girls in life dance troupe, worked so hard on her picture frames and they were so cute!

Since the girls were getting dressed up in their best clothes, they of course had beautiful jewelry, which includes these adorable bangles. Its so cute because they jingle when they walk.

Don't they look adorable.
Most of the children at Rising Star live on campus in the hostel. They live in "families" and have house mothers who watch over and care for them. This is a group of the girls with their house mother. There are four girls houses and four boys houses.
In the evening, some of the volunteers went over to the hostels and the housemothers dressed in saris. (so complicated! I don't know how they get dressed in those by themselves). Here's a picture of me dressed in my sari and looking goofy with a few of the girls.
So after getting all dressed up, we went out in front of the hostel, and the male staff members and volunteers set off fireworks. Diwali is the festival of lights, and traditionally people go around to their neighbors sharing sweets ands setting off fireworks, so even though the children were at school and away from their families, it was nice that they were able to participate in some of their normal traditions.

Some of the boys enjoying the fireworks.

This is my new buddy Steven.
After the fireworks, all the kids got sparklers to play with.
Melissa, Holly, Anne and I all got dressed up in saris.
Lyndsey opted out of the sari, but she's still beautiful and she's a wonderful volunteer coordinator.
Sharmila is the best. She coordinates the mobile medical clinic and she is the most beautiful woman and she has the most sincere beautiful spirit.
At the end we got a bunch of the staff together to take a picture. One of the RSO boys took the picture, and unfortunately he thought we wanted lots of black space in our picture. Oh well. Its still nice to have the memory.
Happy Diwali!!

Weekend Adventures

This past weekend we went to Mamallapuram. It's a coastal town that has temples and rock carvings that date back to the 6-7th century A.D. It also has some great shopping and I started to get some ideas of things that I want to purchase while I'm here in India. While I was there we explored a lot of these rock formations, and one of them was Krishna's "butterball." The story is that Krishna reached down and placed this butterball on this hill. It doesn't look like it should be staying in one place, but urban legend says that they had groups of elephants try and pull it and it wouldn't budge, so there it sits on a hill.

The classic tourist shot is to pose as if you are holding it up, so Vel, one of the RSO drivers, and I posed.
I decided to continue the trend of goofy poses.
There were these amazing hindu temples carved into the rock faces. It was amazing to see the different depictions and the detailed work that is literally thousands of years old!

On Sunday, I took the two hour drive to Chennai to go to church. The Popes (a wonderful family that is volunteering for the next month) the Gates (Pam and Jim who are the directors of RSO right now) and Becky Douglas (the president of RSO who was in town last week) all went to church as well. The car ride was amazing. Listening to Becky tell stories about many of the experiences she's had here in India was truly inspiring. She has changed so many lives and faced unimaginable obstacles. The car ride flew by listening to her talk. Before we knew it, we made it to church. The church is currently held in the basement of an office building. It's fun to attend church all over the world and still feel at home.
After church, Becky recommended we have lunch at the Marriott with Padama Venkatraman, a partner of rising star, a well-known social activist and the daughter of the eight president of india who was imprisoned with Gandhi. First of all, the buffet lunch at the Marriott was delicious and I ate myself silly. They had some extraordinary desserts as well that I just couldn't say no to. Secondly, meeting Padama was an incredible opportunity! She's an amazing beautiful woman, who has literally changed the world! She has changed the very course of some many individuals lives especially those effected by leprosy, the poorest of the poor. I feel so honored to have met her.
On the way back to Chennai, we passed by the new LDS church building being built for the members here. It's an amazing looking building and its almost done! I hope to attend at the new building before I leave. We'll see how that goes though. I've been learning a lot about India and how it handles time. Time is very flexible here. VERY very flexible. It gets to the point where you just say "well that's india" and expect things to show up late.

Speaking of things showing up late, we made one additional stop on the way back to rising star.... we stopped at the airport to pick up.... MY LUGGAGE! I was so thrilled to get my luggage. It made me really happy. I feel like I'm ready to take on india that much more now that I have my stuff.

This week has been the start of my schedule working in the school. It's been exhausting and wonderful being around the kids so much. It's so hard to learn all their names and keep all of them straight, but I'm working really hard at it, and I'm already making a bit of progress.

Any requests on what you want me to post about out there? Let me know. I'm open to suggestions :) I do plan on doing a post soon about the kids.

Weekend Adventures

This past weekend we went to Mamallapuram. It's a coastal town that has temples and rock carvings that date back to the 6-7th century A.D. It also has some great shopping and I started to get some ideas of things that I want to purchase while I'm here in India. While I was there we explored a lot of these rock formations, and one of them was Krishna's "butterball." The story is that Krishna reached down and placed this butterball on this hill. It doesn't look like it should be staying in one place, but urban legend says that they had groups of elephants try and pull it and it wouldn't budge, so there it sits on a hill.

The classic tourist shot is to pose as if you are holding it up, so Vel, one of the RSO drivers, and I posed.
I decided to continue the trend of goofy poses.
There were these amazing hindu temples carved into the rock faces. It was amazing to see the different depictions and the detailed work that is literally thousands of years old!

On Sunday, I took the two hour drive to Chennai to go to church. The Popes (a wonderful family that is volunteering for the next month) the Gates (Pam and Jim who are the directors of RSO right now) and Becky Douglas (the president of RSO who was in town last week) all went to church as well. The car ride was amazing. Listening to Becky tell stories about many of the experiences she's had here in India was truly inspiring. She has changed so many lives and faced unimaginable obstacles. The car ride flew by listening to her talk. Before we knew it, we made it to church. The church is currently held in the basement of an office building. It's fun to attend church all over the world and still feel at home.
After church, Becky recommended we have lunch at the Marriott with Padama Venkatraman, a partner of rising star, a well-known social activist and the daughter of the eight president of india who was imprisoned with Gandhi. First of all, the buffet lunch at the Marriott was delicious and I ate myself silly. They had some extraordinary desserts as well that I just couldn't say no to. Secondly, meeting Padama was an incredible opportunity! She's an amazing beautiful woman, who has literally changed the world! She has changed the very course of some many individuals lives especially those effected by leprosy, the poorest of the poor. I feel so honored to have met her.
On the way back to Chennai, we passed by the new LDS church building being built for the members here. It's an amazing looking building and its almost done! I hope to attend at the new building before I leave. We'll see how that goes though. I've been learning a lot about India and how it handles time. Time is very flexible here. VERY very flexible. It gets to the point where you just say "well that's india" and expect things to show up late.

Speaking of things showing up late, we made one additional stop on the way back to rising star.... we stopped at the airport to pick up.... MY LUGGAGE! I was so thrilled to get my luggage. It made me really happy. I feel like I'm ready to take on india that much more now that I have my stuff.

This week has been the start of my schedule working in the school. It's been exhausting and wonderful being around the kids so much. It's so hard to learn all their names and keep all of them straight, but I'm working really hard at it, and I'm already making a bit of progress.

Any requests on what you want me to post about out there? Let me know. I'm open to suggestions :) I do plan on doing a post soon about the kids.

Second Medical Trip

On thursday, our medical team went to the colony A. S. Nagar and a school for special needs children. We also dropped off food for Bharathapuram, another colony. So lots of different stops that day! First, we went to the school, and the volunteers got to color and play with the 30 special needs kids while the nurses and doctor did check ups with the children. They were the sweetest, most affectionate children.

We weren't really able to communicate with them because they didn't speak English, but we still did our best to play with them and enjoy them. Lyndsey taught one of the girls some hand games.
There were other children at this school as well. A large number of girls were in the courtyard when we drove up, and they were fascinated by us. They wanted to know our names and asked for me to take pictures of them. These girls were adorable.
So I got in a picture with them.
After the visit at the school, we went on to the colony. I worked the foot cleaning and bandage cutting station. It's a very small colony and we only had 4-5 patients, so it was a quick visit. All the patients lived together in a very small space, but it was amazing to see how much progress these patients have made (in comparison to the colony that just began receiving treatment). There wounds were not very bad, and the disease is no longer progressing for many of them.

Rising Star does more than just provide medical treatment, they also provide custom made shoes to fit the feet of the patients. This is one of the special shoes. Often they are sandals, but in this case it is a boot because of the weakness in the woman's leg. The blue thing is used by the nurse who cuts away at the dead skin. It holds up the limb while she works. Rising Star also has a micro-lending program, and one of the people that benefited from this micro lending is the man pictured above. He is no longer a beggar. Instead he is a tailor in their community! You could see the pride in his face as we pointed out his sewing machine and the other work we could see.
After the colony, we stopped by Bharathapuram to drop off food. At this colony, there is an art school. All of the artists are individuals effected by leprosy. They sell their art as a way to do fundraising for the colony. Apparently, there art has been show in different countries in Europe and their paintings can be sold for hundreds of dollars. I bought 2 painting while I was there ($45 a piece) and the artist was there! I was able to take a picture with her. Her name was Yuma. I'm so excited that I got to support this colony in some way.
Thursday was a great day, but Friday was really wonderful too. We went to another colony, and in the afternoon, I had my first day dancing with Life dance Troupe! It's an after school dance troupe. The first dance troupe for children effected by leprosy. It was a wonderful day, and I'm so excited to get started dancing with these kids. For the last 2 months, Anne has been working with these kids and we will move forward working together leading the troupe. I'm really glad that I'm finally getting into the dance work. Next week will be even better, since I'll get to dance with them every day!

Next post will be about Mahalapuram, a coastal town, where we went shopping! A nice vacation day.

Work in the Leprosy Colonies

WARNING! (this is for you Carrie and Myriah) there will be pictures in this post of those who are effected by leprosy. Some of hte pictures may be unpleasant to look at. (and believe me I'm not posting the worst of them)

Wednesday I went to work with the mobile medical clinic for the first time. That involves piling into a van with a doctor (or two) a nurse (or two) and whatever volunteers are signed up to help in the colonies that day. The van is filled with medicine, tables, chairs, charts and medical supplies. We usually drive between 45minutes and an hour and a half to get to the colonies. The mobile medical clinic rotates between 8 different colonies every two weeks. Wednesday we went to Pallanpakam.

Here's a picture of our van :)

Once we arrived, we set up all the stations for treating the patients. There's a station for cutting bandages, cleaning feet, oiling feet, cutting off dead skin and rebandanging. Anne is sitting at the foot washing station.

All of this happens after their blood pressure is checked and the see the doctor for their medication.

Navamani and Melissa were all set and ready to go for the final station of cutting away the dead skin and rebandaging. All volunteers wear face masks and two sets of gloves when working with the leprosy effected patients.

I cut off bandages. I'm set and already to go.

We all got to work. Our first patient was this beautiful woman named Chopama (yes I make up the spellings, I Have no idea how to spell these names). She came up as soon as we arrived. She had on a beautiful pink sari, and was missing most of her teeth. She chattered away joyfully in Tamil, and it was really fun talking with her even though we had no way of knowing what the other was saying. She was a beautiful woman.

The man I'm working with here was probably one of the hardest parts of the whole experience. He was in a great deal of pain, so I had to be very careful while cutting off his bandage. It was hard though, because I also didn't know what to expect as I was cutting off this bandage. As I cut the bandage off, I saw more and more raw infected skin. He was missing most of his feet, and the ulcers were everywhere. At one point, the ulcer was so deep it reached all the way to his bone. To make matters worse there were maggots crawling around on his skin. This apparently was one of worst cases some of the long term volunteers had seen. This is a fairly new colony that RSO is working with, so these patients have only been receiving treatment for the last 3 weeks, so many of their ulcers are still very bad.

Anne was in charge of washing, so she worked on cleaning the maggots off his feet while they soaked in antiseptic.

He was an incredibly brave man. I'm so happy that RSO is working with this colony now. In a year, his leprosy will no longer be progressing, and hopefully he will be able to walk. His quality of life will improve tremendously in the coming year.

Anne and I took some time after we were done treating all of the patients to take some pictures with some of the beautiful women at the colony. The woman in pink next to Anne is Copama.

I really enjoyed my first experience working in a leprosy colony.

And the people I work with are awesome too. Lyndsey, the volunteer coordinator is on the left and Anne the other Promethean Spark volunteer is on the right.

Here's a picture of the whole crew who worked at Palanpakam this week.

I'm not sure why some of the formatting was weird on this blog. Hopefully it won't be in future posts. More posts to come!