So what has happened since I last updated?
Most of the children have returned back to the orphanage after spending some time with their family. The couple who are still gone should be back by the end of this week.
They began school last week and attend every day except Sunday. They even have to go 3 Saturdays/month. Can you even imagine that?
This is their schedule: Wake up at 5:15am for prayer, which goes until 6am. The tutors come from 6am-7am and then from 7am-830am is breakfast and getting ready, then they leave for school at 9am. The little ones come back from school for the day around 1130am-12pm (pre-schoolers), and then the high schoolers come back here for lunch at 1pm then go to school until 5pm, which is when the rest of the kids return. They have about a half hour, and then the tutors come back from 530pm-630pm, then they have prayer from 7pm-745ish, dinner around 8pm and then go to bed. So their day is jam-packed full mostly of studying. I, however, have a lot of free time now while they’re school. Luckily, my mom gave me a couple books for my birthday and am working on the second of the two currently.
I was thinking about possibly starting to write my own book while I’m here. Not an auto-biography, but possibly a work of fiction that may include a few situations from my own life. I am also in the process of writing some songs. I’ve never done that before, but have always wanted to. Between working on it here, and partnering with my extremely talented friend back home, I think we may come up with some cool stuff.
We’re still waiting on the monsoon, hoping that it will be arriving within the next week. Because of the heat, it was declared that as of today, all of the kids will only being having half-days of school thru the end of the month. I just feel terrible that they can’t do anything because it’s so hot, so they end up sitting in Peter’s room when there’s power to watch to tv because it wouldn’t be safe for them to be playing outside.
As many of you know, my birthday was June 17. 24-years-old. I know that sounds young to most people, but for me, I can’t help but wonder where the past 24 years have gone. It seems like just yesterday that I was graduating from 8th grade, and now here I am, living in India, still not knowing exactly what I want to do with my life. It’s funny how when you’re so young, you know exactly what you want for yourself. You have everything planned out. And then when the time comes to make your dreams and goals a reality, there are a million other possibilities that you didn’t think of when you were 10-years-old and planning your life out.
Anyway, the kids had been so excited about my birthday for a long time. From the time it was 10 days before, they would come up to me and shake my hand and say “in advance happy birthday.” The morning of, the girls all came in my room to wake me up and they each shook my hand, kissed it and said “Happy Birthday, Sister.” What a good way to wake up.
They had to go to school that day, so Vijay and I went out and she took me out to lunch and we went to a jewelry shop and I bought myself a beautiful ring (the one thing I’m allowing myself to get strictly because I wanted it). I usually do not like gold at all but gold here is a lot different than in the US. It’s much more pure and I had seen this ring over a month ago and it’s just perfect.
Vijay had bought me a half-sari the month before so her and the sewing teacher tailored it to me and had it done so I could wear it. There was extra fabric so they made Grace (Vijay’s 2-year-old daughter) a little dress to match.
They got me a cake and all of the kids sang “Happy Birthday” in English, but a different version, and I got in a small frosting fight with Vijay and everyone enjoyed the cake afterwards and then a dinner with chicken curry (we only get chicken here on special occasions). It was a birthday I will definitely never forget and I feel bad for ever being upset that I wouldn’t be with my friends and family back home, thinking I would “have no one.” I had more people here to celebrate with than I would have back home, and it was amazing.
Over the past couple of weeks, God has really been working in me and changing my heart even more and giving me new perspectives on different situations that would arise. I’m learning to do things with a much more willing heart, even though it may not be what I had planned for myself at all. I’ve learned that attitude is everything when it comes to whether something is enjoyable or not. You can be doing something you absolutely hate but could still either enjoy it or have it come out being a positive experience because of a positive attitude. It seems like common sense, but how often do we groan and gripe about the tasks laid before us and just force ourselves to do it, complaining the whole time or wishing we were doing something different? I’m still learning to do this, but so far it has proved to work out much better for me than being my normal, negative-self about it.
A few of you have heard about my second scary situation here. But for those of you who haven’t, let me quickly summarize what happened. A few days ago, while the kids were in school, I was in my room watching a movie. Remember that my actual bedroom is connected to two other rooms; the dining room on one side, and the room w/shelves and a sink on the other side. I heard a rummaging noise and look over and there were two monkeys sitting in the room with the sink. A bag of some of my things were all over the floor and the monkeys were trying to open things and eat them, and when they realized they couldn’t eat them, they would throw them on the floor and go for the next thing. This may sound funny now, but these are not cute monkeys. They are extremely ugly and very dangerous. I became almost paralyzed with fear and just froze. One of them stared at me and made a growling/hissing noise. I almost screamed but instead, I shut my door to that room and shoved my bed in front of it. It took everything I had in me to go out the dining room door to get out because I was afraid there would be more monkeys over there. Luckily there weren’t, so I went downstairs and got Peter and told him that there were monkeys up in my room. He grabbed a large baseball bat and came up and chased them away with it. Of course little Moses heard the word, “monkey” and got really excited and wanted to see what was going on so I had to grab him before he ran over to the monkeys. He was so cute though saying “monkey” over and over again. Peter said that there were the two monkeys that I saw and then 2 larger ones in the actual bathroom where the shower and toilet are outside. The monkeys here can sense fear in people, so if they know that you’re scared, they will come after you and attach themselves onto you and claw at your face, and will probably bite you, causing some serious damage. Even though I know this, I can’t help but be terrified. I’ve seen monkeys every day since, but none have come in my room, thankfully. I was told that the monkey season is actually when it gets cooler out, so I’m sure there will be many more to come. I never thought I would ever in my life have to worry about monkeys coming into my room anywhere and eating my stuff.
This has gotten to be quite the long blog post. I suppose that’s what I get for not updating at least once a week.
I want to leave you with one thing:
My mom gave me the brilliant idea of telling little stories about kids here; More than just the little biographies about their life before OAFA that you can find on the website.
I’m going to tell you about Divya (Di-Vee-Ya). She is 9-years-old, and is the only child here with HIV. Although she suffers from this illness, you would never guess. She has so much energy and has the brightest smile. All I have to do is look at her smiling at me and I can’t help but smile back and just love her even more. She tends to get tired a little bit easier and keeps to herself, but is filled with so much joy. I’m not sure why, but she loves cleaning things and organizing, so one of her favorite things to do is come in my room and move stuff around and put all my shoes in a bag and pile all of the boxes on top of each other to look more organized. She folds everything and loves to help me fold my saris (which is for the most part, a 2-person job) and even folds my clothes that I had worn the day before. After she’s done organizing whatever she felt was needed at the time, she sits on my bed with me and looks at pictures of my family and friends from back home. She also likes skype-ing with people back home. She came and joined me while I was talking to a friend back home and he decided to teach her the “rock on” hand gesture, so every now and then, she’ll run around doing the hand gesture, saying “rock on” in her little Indian accent, and then stick out her tongue like they do in rock bands. It’s so funny, and so cute.
I have an extremely soft spot in my heart for her. She used to have beautiful long hair, but had to get it all cut off. Even so, she is one of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. It breaks my heart to know what she’s suffering from.
I’m pretty sure this is my longest entry yet.
I’ll try to get better at updating more often.
Thank you SO SO much for all of your continued prayers and encouragement. I love getting the little facebook status comments from so many of you and also the email updates about what’s going on in your lives back home. A huge thank you to those who sent me birthday cards here. It brought home a little bit closer to me and I will keep those cards forever.
Feel free to contact me either over here, email or facebook, or stay updated with what I’m doing by finding me on “Twitter” (yes, I gave in and got it). Also, if you ever want to skype with me and meet some of the kids, let me know and we can set up a time. :)
Love to you all!
Jenna
p.s. I am putting up a couple pictures of Divya so you can see who I’m talking about. :) (click on them to see larger views)
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