"What's Your Name?"

I heard "What's your name?" a hundred times today.  I'd say "Kim" and the child would repeat back "Keem".  I love it.

We drove out to Rising Star today which is near a village called Thottanaval.  Matt and I and a father/son pair rode in the jeep type car that carried our group's luggage.  It was a great ride out of the city and into the countryside.  Our jeep wasn't air conditioned so we had the windows rolled down.  It wasn't too bad.  The big Rising Star van with the other people had it a little more comfortable, but our rolled down windows provided a good opportunity for Matt to take some good pictures.  Here are some.

I will take pictures of the building we are staying in later.  Here is the picture of the children's school.
I could hear them in there when we pulled up.  I couldn't believe that I was finally at my destination.  We traveled so far to come to this very spot... out in the middle of nowhere India!

After our orientation and getting settled in our room (thankfully, Matt and I are in the same room because there aren't very many volunteers right now), we got to go over to the playground area and meet and play with the kindergarten aged kids.  I think there are about 15 of them.  This is when we started getting asked what our names are.  Here are some pics of that play time.  Oh, and check out the awesome clothes I get to wear while I'm here.  So comfy.

Here are pictures of later on in the evening when we went back to play with the whole group of 200 kids.  Matt was in heaven learning how to play cricket. I ran around playing tag with some girls and also played a make-shift game of badminton.  Fun times.

After play time, Matt and I were assigned to go into one of the boys' hostels and do a 20 minute "family home evening" type of thing.  The kids are divided into "families" with a house mother.  We had a family of 20 boys that ranged in ages 5-16.  When we got in there they were already singing a LONG song in their language Tamil.  It was so cool.  We had a prayer which I got to say.  It was very humbling to kneel in that little room with 20 boys in a circle.  Matt did a nice impromptu lesson on David and Goliath and related it to them how God can give them strength to overcome their obstacles.  Then we sang a hymn and then told them about us and where we come from and about our kids.  It was nice.  We will do this every night rotating between all of the "families".

I gotta go to bed.  I'm super tired.  Love to you all.  

Nalvaravu (Welcome) to India!

We made it half way around the world!  I keep having reality checks to make sure this is really happening and that I'm not just sitting at home watching The Amazing Race on tv.  We are having such a great time already.  It's a bit overwhelming at times, but there's nothing better for me right now than to be out of my comfortable bubble.  I'm really here in India!  I've pushed back tears a couple of times already today.  This is an amazing culture.  The people seem so different, yet we are the same in many ways.

We flew from Boise to Denver to Frankfurt to Chennai.  Total air time was about 20+ hours.  On the flight to Frankfurt, we were on the very last row and in the middle of that huge plane.  

Leaving Boise with a lump in my throat

Our ride to Frankfurt 

It wasn't very comfortable, and boy was I happy when that 9 hours was over.  We hurried to make the connection and discovered that we had been upgraded to business class.  Jackpot!  I never really knew what I was missing up until that point.  That is definitely the way to fly when traveling these distances.  We basically got to fly in a bed.  These chairs can recline to be all the way flat.  Awesome.

I love watching the map that shows where we are flying.  It was cool to know that we were flying over Dubai and into the Indian Ocean.

There are a bunch of little stories I could tell you...like how we decided to exchange our money to rupees at the Denver airport and then read in my India book that it's illegal to bring that currency in and out of India.  So we took the money back to the money changer and told him that.  Not sure why he didn't know it.  Maybe it's really not a big deal and enforced, but we didn't want to take the chance of having it confiscated.  And thankfully this money changer gave us our full amount of money back and didn't charge us the exchange rate.  Ha! I just told you the whole story.  The other story in our flying adventure is that our two pieces of checked baggage didn't make it onto our airplane out of Germany.  We had to stand in a line for a long time to fill out the paperwork to get our bags sent to our destination.  Then we had to stand around until this guy brought us some money to pay us for toiletries etc to get us through until we get our stuff back.  But it seemed like we were the only ones getting money and it was done in a weird discreet way.  We didn't really need the money because we had prepared for this situation.  We had several days worth of clothes etc in our carry ons so this was an added bonus.  We were afraid our driver had left us because it was nearly two hours after landing that we walked out the doors of the airport into the unknown.  It was so good to see a man with my name on a sign waiting.  Yes, we had a ride to the hotel.  

Just arrived in India a bit jet lagged

We slept for about three or four hours in a comfortable bed.  Then we got to do what I have been dreaming about for some time.  We went to one of a handful of LDS churches in India!  Immediately upon entering the gated church lot and leaving the crazy streets, I felt peace.  We walked into the front doors and were greeted by a sister missionary.  I thought of my Chelsea, who will be just like this sister in a few months somewhere in this big world.  We went upstairs to the chapel.  This is a new building and from the outside it looks different from our churches in the States.  But on the inside, it was very similar.  We walked into sacrament meeting while the small congregation was singing The Spirit of God.  I was home.  The meeting was spoken in english.  Most of the speakers I could understand despite their thick indian accents.  It was beautiful being there and listening to the same teachings like basic faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  I told Matt that I wanted to stay there all day because I felt comfortable inside and that I didn't feel comfortable outside.  The people, afterwards, were so friendly to us.  I wish I could have taken pictures of them.  They were beautiful.

Matt standing in front of church wondering if our driver left us stranded.  He didn't.

After a three hour nap, we had a driver named Elumalai take us to do a little sight seeing.  Driving here is CRAZY and I love it.  It's better than being at an amusement park.  There are no lanes.  One puts his car wherever there isn't anything and sometimes almost where there IS something.  Sometimes the cars, scooters, and pedestrians are so close you can stick half your arm out the window and touch each other.  I've noticed that cars don't have any dents or broken tail lights.  Somehow they don't hit each other.  People don't seem in a hurry or impatient or scared despite all of the honking going on.  It's just how they announce their presence.  We've seen quite a few families of four on these bikes.

Today, we went to our Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints church, to a Catholic basilica, and to a Hindu temple festival.  The Catholic basilica is called Basilica of San Thome.  It is a gothic-style building and behind it is where St. Thomas ("Doubting Thomas") is buried.  The crypt contains a small bone from the apostle's hand and the weapon that killed him there in Chennai.  

Then our driver told us there was a big annual festival today and tomorrow at a nearby Hindu temple.  He took us there and hooked us up with a guy named Nagu who escorted us through the temple area.  He taught us a lot about Hinduism and this Vishnu temple.  There were thousands of people there this afternoon.  We were told to have our bags in front of us and be careful with them as we began our walk through throngs of worshipers.  

I am out of time tonight to tell you about this, but here are some pictures.  My favorites are of the children.  They wanted me to take their picture and shake their hands.  They were gorgeous children.  Nagu told me how to say thank you in Tamil so I could say it to them, but I've already forgotten what the word is.  Oh, I also want to tell you that once inside the temple area, we had to remove our shoes.  Matt had socks on.  I was barefoot.  Needless to say, I washed my feet later on.  Even though it seemed a bit chaotic among all of these people, there was a sense of peace there and with us.  We weren't very nervous at all.  Our tour guide made sure to stay close to us and thankfully, he spoke fairly understandable english.  

Tomorrow we are off to Rising Star Outreach.  I can't wait!  

video is coming soon.  I'm having trouble uploading it.

Special Delivery

I was asked by the volunteer coordinator if we'd be willing to take some mail in our luggage to Rising Star in India.  I received the box today.  Here's what was in it.

Besides a few things for a long-term volunteer, everything else is for specific children from their sponsors here in the states.  I read through the hard to pronounce names that they are addressed to, and I got all emotional and began to cry.  These are real children who are loved, and I was overcome with joy that I am about to meet them.  I'm REALLY going on Friday!

A lot of preparation has gone into this trip.  It's the biggest trip I've ever planned.  So many details!  It will be nice to actually get going on it!

I've been making this pile of stuff in the corner of my bedroom for the last few weeks.  We have to bring some food items... snacks, cereal/oatmeal, gatorade packets, and some sandwich fillings like tuna and peanut butter and honey.  I bought small candy and toy items for the student's "Star Store".  We've got travel sized everything, ear plugs, head rests, lice shampoo (just in case), heavy duty Deet mosquito spray, and sunscreen.  And much more:)

Vaccines

Look at this brave little girl...

We are one more step towards being ready to travel to India.
This past week, Matt and I went to the Travel Medicine office at St. Alphonsus.  This lady was so nice and thorough.  I thought I wouldn't need any more vaccines besides getting some malaria medicine.  Boy was I wrong!
I needed four shots and Matt needed only two.
I got my adult polio booster.
I got the flu vaccine which was my first ever to receive.
I got the Tdap vaccine. That's tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis.  It came out in 2005 for adolescents and adults.
And the 4th shot I got was the 1st in a series of 3 for Hepatitis A & B.  Lucky me... I get to go back next Wednesday for the 2nd one and two weeks later, 2 days before we leave, for the 3rd one.
Yesterday we both started the oral typhoid vaccine.  We each take a pill every other day with a total of four pills.
And tomorrow I will be picking up our malaria medication which we have to start taking this week and every day through our visit and for a week after we return.
We decided against getting the 3 part rabies vaccine.  It would have cost us each $300 per dose.  That would have been $1800 and we are pretty sure that insurance wouldn't be covering that.  So, we leave it in God's hands that we don't get bit by a monkey, dog or bat while we are there!
We also decided against the 3 part Japanese Encephalitis vaccine because we don't have the correct amount of time before our departure to finish all three doses.  That is another disease, like malaria, that is transmitted by mosquitoes.  It's recommended for people traveling to Asia for more than a month.  So hopefully, since we aren't going to be there even half that time, we will be okay.

I could get freaked out over all of the diseases I could potentially be exposed to while in India.  But I choose not to freak out.  I don't want to be afraid.   If I was afraid then I'd miss out on so much that life has to offer.  And this girl isn't going to miss out.