A mediocre day overall, I suppose

 I give up on trying to make the font pretty! It’s driving me crazy. I think I’ll have to go through and fix all the fonts and spacing at some point.

Today was the roughest day we’ve had so far at the orphanage.  Picture a group of 2 year olds who are basically left to govern themselves.  Of course,  since most of their speech is of the “ba ba ba” variety, they do it with their hands, and nails, and teeth.  Today I guess was when I found myself really fed up with it.  I had one kid sleeping on my lap, and 2 others started crawling on me, biting each other, hitting, scratching, pinching each other, me, and the innocent sleeping girl.  The 2 words I know in Hindi are “nahi” and “ruko”, aka “no” and “stop”, and these didn’t help in the slightest.  The kids are just so MEAN to each other, and I know that they need to be for survival in their strange little democracy, but it can be hard for me to take.  There was also some stuff going on with an older boy (5-6 max) who frequently displays disturbing behavior.  He was doing some “bad touching” with a girl who seems a bit special needs and unable to understand what he’s doing.  I was pretty upset about this and my powerlessness to stop it.  I left feeling physically beat up (Pinki attacked my neck when I took her away from the electrical outlet she was sticking her fingers in!) and mentally exhausted.

There were a couple good things about today though, it wasn’t all bad.  Asha was much happier with her new mom today and was playing with her, letting her hold her, and generally acting normal again.  The mom is so sweet and I was so happy to see her feeling better about the whole thing.  I wish I could stay in touch with them, but I know their story will have a happy ending.  Also, one of the slightly older girls (3 years old or so – for my family, picture an Indian Mary James looking child!) leapt into my arms when I came in, and said in English “Hi!”, and then to my complete surprise, “I love you.”  I was so surprised and charmed, even though she doesn’t know what she’s saying I’m sure.  She’s very bright and I did teach her how to count in English the other day.  Today I taught her to rub the back of a crying child to comfort her, so hopefully I can do my little part to help the kids learn some empathy while I’m here.

Annica and I set off on a fruitless camera search today that involved crossing the scary road.  The camera stores were insanely expensive and only had 2 or 3 models each.  BUT, all was not lost because we found a bookstore that had Baby-Sitters Club books!! And another store that had vanilla soymilk! It was glorious.

We came home and had a lecture about the caste system and education in India that was pretty interesting. And they brought us samosas! It was my first samosa in India and it was so delicious.

I showed everybody in the house what I believe to be the greatest thing ever. If you haven’t seen it, you must watch. http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNw

And now the day’s winding down and we’re watching a Hallmark Channel original movie called “Dynasty: Behind the Greed, Sex and Manipulation”.  Half the group went out to a bar and a few of us are watching this. You can tell how super-cool I am.

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