You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.
My Indian Summer has come to a close. With about 150 volunteers coming through Rising Star this summer it was definitely a busy one but SO SO much fun. I will miss the other coordinators who have been here with me since I got here but overall I am very excited for this next stage at Rising Star--the off season. So far I'm a BIG FAN of life at Rising Star without volunteer sessions. Don't get me wrong, I love having volunteers here, there is tons of life and energy with every new group that comes through and it is amazing to see how excited and vibrant the kids get with each group. The thing I like about the off-season thus far, though, is the sense of calm and familiarity. The kids are used to us volunteers that are here and they are falling into more of a set schedule now and because us volunteers that are here are part of that schedule we have become even more like family. I am SO EXCITED for my next 8 months here--I already know it's going to be amazing.
Now don't think the volunteer sessions didn't end without a party. :) At the end of each session, Life Dance (Rising Star's dance team) performs all of their dances for the volunteers. After the last session's performance a huge dance party basically broke out and the kids pulled out all their best moves--it was ridiculously awesome. To say these kids can dance doesn't even cut it, they all have this innate sense of rhythm that you don't see very often. They are seriously the coolest kids around.
This is Ashok (the one from the trash can). Who would have thought you'd find a legit popper in the middle of nowhere in India??
He's too good to just have one video
Vignesh, Vimalkanth, and Joseph were FEELIN IT!!
Basically this whole summer was a huge party. From the first session to the last it was tons of fun to meet new volunteers, play with the kids, and generally just have an awesome time. :) This video is after Life Dance's first performance for session 1--they are just legit all the time.
As promised a few posts ago, here is a video of me singing Justin Bieber with the kids. We got super legit with our Bieber lullaby this week cause Dani is here and she plays the ukulele and before she had come she had learned to play "Baby"(not because I had taught them, just because she loves the Biebs too). So, we took our act on the road and performed "Baby" to 5 of the 8 houses of kids. It was really fun and Deepenraj, one of the older boys that goes to church with us, told me that I should perform the rap section of the song at Youth Conference next week--yeah, I'm that cool.
This group in the video was one of my favs cause the girls all know the song and could sing it with us.
This second video was taken a few weeks before our "big performance" night with the uke. The girls were going a little crazy cause their housemother was out of town so we were playing and dancing all around. I have come to find that the girls really love rap cause that is always the part they request for me to sing...dangit I love these kids.
Hello one and all! Hope all is going swimmingly in America and you all are enjoying the last vestiges of summer--please eat a hot dog and lay out by the pool in my honor. As is witnessed by the title of this post, this week started off pretty crazy for me--Monday, August 15, 2011 is a date which will live in infamy...as far as my life goes. So because this day was so awesome/crazy/random/super I will just start from the beginning...
August 15 is Independence Day in India.This is the day, in 1947, that India declared its independence from Britain and became a sovereign nation. Much like the fourth of July, Independence Day is a national holiday in India and every year all the schools in India do a specific program in honor of the day. The school was decorated with tons of flags and everyone pinned little Indian flags to their clothes for the day. For the independence day program, the kids perform a marchpast. A marchpast is a specific march that is meant to honor the country. The kids had practiced the marchpast the whole week before independence day and it was really cool to watch the finished product (see video below). After the marchpast, the rest of the program just consisted of a few of the older kids giving speeches on Indian independence, famous freedom fighters, and their thoughts on Indian independence. When the kid's speeches were done, Dr. Susan and Jim said a few words and Celina thanked everyone involved with getting the program set-up. It was so interesting to see how differently the people here celebrate their independence than we do in America. There was a great sense of formality and tradition in the program and it was an honor to witness. Speaking of honor, there was one other cool part about the independence day program. Each year at the independence day program, leaders within the school and organization are honored for their work. The people that are honored receive a jasmine wreath and sit at the front during the speech portion of the program. The people honored this year were Jim and Pam Gates (the country directors at RSO), Dr. Susan Hilton (the national director of RSO), Hirudayanathan (the Indian principal), Celina (the director of education) and lastly.....ME (random year-long volunteer). It truly was an honor to be included with this amazing group of people and honored at their independence day program. It is an honor I will always cherish because it came from my indian family.
Kala putting jasmine and roses in my hair. I never have a bobbypin on me when she goes to do this so she always ends up giving me hers even though I tell her not to--she is one of the kindest women ever.
Dr. Susan honoring me with a jasmine wreath.
All of the honored guests during the students speeches--not my cutest face but oh well.
Marchpast--Yes, I am the world's worst videographer.
So you would think being honored at the Indian Independence Day program would be the culmination of an awesome day...nay, things got better from here. Rajakumari (one of my dear friends here) has been wanting me to bike to her house on my new cycle to eat with her family for quite some time now. We have set multiple dates but for some reason they never worked out. We finally decided that Independence day would be the perfect day to come over because her whole family would be there and there was no school so we would have all day. Originally, Rebecca was going to accompany me on this journey but she had been sick all weekend, so Dani was invited in her stead (Dani is the overarching volunteer director for Rising Star who came with her nephew just for this last session). We planned to leave at 2:00pm but with the new set of volunteers coming, Dani had to work and we were not able to leave until about 3:45. Now, this was my first, official off-campus bike ride so the journey was bound to be a little crazy from the get-go. Dani was a rockstar and channeled Mother Teresa throughout this ride cause I definitely wasn't the fastest. In my defense, though, the roads we were riding on were anything but smooth and by the end of the ride I was getting fairly decent. Anyways, we set-off from RSO with sunny sky and even sunnier faces with the hopes on getting to Rajakumari's house in about 45 minutes max. The first part of the ride went by well enough: I stumbled along and Dani helped to encourage and not make me feel too completely stupid. About we were almost halfway there when it started to sprinkle--the sky had been darkening throughout our ride. By the time we reached the halfway point at the catholic hospital that we often work with, we were caught in a full-on, torrential downpour to the point where we couldn't see to ride any longer. We pulled off to the side of the road and sat at a covered bus stop for a minute debating on what to do next. A woman at the bus stop was trying to talk to us in Tamil and from her gestures I could piece together that her main point of communicating was to ask why the hell we were biking in a rainstorm and how ridiculously wet we had gotten (we were soaked). While she was talking to us, Rajakumari called my phone to tell us she was sending her brother on her scooty to pick us up. Rajakumari's brother arrived at the hospital about 5 minutes later and we had to think for awhile the best way to go about getting to Rajakumari's house. We finally decided on locking our bikes and hiding them in a nearby bush and then all three of us cramming on the scooty like true indians and driving to Rajakumari's house. We stored the bikes and waited a few minutes to see if the rain would slow down a little before taking off on the scooty....it never slowed down. So, we crammed on the scooty and took off into the downpour. If we weren't soaked to the bone before we definitely were after 2 minutes on that scooter--how he was able to see in the driving rain is still a mystery to me. Ten minutes later we pulled up to Rajakumari's house soaking wet and happy to be alive and have made it. I have said this many times before and I'm sure will say it many times after--Indian people are some of the most giving people I have ever met. Rajakumari had prepared a bunch of food for us and was ridiculously kind an accommodating once we got there. She heaped food onto our plates until we were stuffed to the brim and then she just boxed stuff up and sent it home with us. One of the funnest parts of the meal was that all of Rajakumari's little cousins were over for the holiday. Two of the older cousins (I think one was in 8th standard and one was in 6th) had never seen a foreigner before and they thought we were the craziest/coolest thing around. They had tons of energy and kept pointing out random features and saying they were super, i.e. "Face so super!", "Teeth so super!" "Hair so super!" "Clothes so super!" These girls were very expressive so they had all kids of actions to go with there phrases. They were definitely worth our crazy ride to get to Rajakumari's house.
Dani and I with Rajakumari and her ADORABLE cousins!
By the time we had finished eating and playing with the kids, the rain had stopped so we headed back towards the bikes. I'm not sure why, but for some reason Rajakumari thought it necessary to have us go back to hospital on separate bikes instead of all three of us cramming on the scooty. So, lucky me, I got to ride back to the catholic hospital on a legit motorcycle with a friend/neighbor/acquaintance of Rajakumari's. Thankfully our bikes were still there and unharmed and we were able to bike back to RSO with no problems (unless you count my horrible biking skills as a problem).
So basically in my first bike ride ever I had to deal with all the worst elements: potholes, rain to the point where you can't see, mud...it was super!!! JD, look how far I've come from central park!
Overall, it was a CRAZY adventure that words really can't do justice to describe--you had to have been there. I'm sure there are more adventures like this in store for me throughout this next year...it's gonna be awesome.
One of my newest tasks in the school is grading the writing journals for third and fourth standards. Everyday (or every other day in fourth standard's case) I go into the class and correct all the journals (capitalize where needed, add punctuation marks, etc.) Today's journal topic for third standard was "Write about something beautiful." Although journal grading can be pretty tedious most of the time, today's topic made the grading process very fun. There were some very typical entries talking about how butterflies, peacocks, and leopards were beautiful but there were also some stand-outs. Sagayamary, the girl that I sponsor, said in her journal that new books were beautiful--she is definitely a girl after my own heart. One of the little girls wrote that "Fathima Miss", the third standard teacher, was beautiful--the kids are seriously so sweet.
There were two entries, though, that I really loved and I loved them for different reasons. The first was an entry from Subasri, one of the third standard girls, saying that P.T. Sir (the P.E. teacher) was "very, very beautiful." There are few things more endearing than little kids with crushes and the fact that she wrote it in her journal that is definitely not private (it's read by me, her teacher, as well as administration). It is so cute to see how much the kids love the teachers and staff at Rising Star--they are the permanent fixtures in their lives that give them the support and love they need on a daily basis.
The other entry I loved came from two boys, Sathish and M. Vishva. They had separate entries but they both listed the same thing. Now, to preface, both of these boys could easily be deemed "troublemakers"--they are disruptive, they get in fights, they struggle in school, etc. They are really great kids but these are just some things they struggle with. It is because of this that I was wonderfully surprised to read their journal entries that listed Jesus and God as beautiful. To see these boys blatantly write their feelings about God and Christ was so sweet--underneath their crazy exterior is a soft, sensitive spirit. It is also really amazing to me that these kids have such an understanding of Christ and God to know that they are beautiful. I also love that they are not ashamed or nervous or embarrassed to write about and show their love to God--they feel that God and Christ are beautiful and they want to share their feelings in their journals...so they do just that.
I finished grading journals with a smile on my face and went about my day. Later that same afternoon, even though it was completely sunny, it started to rain...and it was raining hard. Rain when it is sunny outside is awesome because you get the best of both worlds--warm sunshine and cool rain. I walked around in the rain and got thoroughly soaked. As I was walking from the Green House (where I live) over to the school it stopped raining and an entire rainbow stretched over the blue sky (when I say entire rainbow I mean a WHOLE RAINBOW--big arch stretching all the way down on both ends). From the beautiful, blue, sunny sky to the rainbow to the expansive green landscape I couldn't help but be struck by the beauty of it. It was an idyllic scene--something you only see in movies.
So this is me writing my own journal entry about something beautiful--India is beautiful.
As any parent can tell you, being with kids 24/7 makes everyday a little adventure. Kids really do say and do the darndest things (that Bill Cosby always gets it right). Living at RSO with 160 children ranging in age from 4 to 16 has brought all kinds of hilarious moments that add an extra shimmer to what could have been called a regular old day. Here are just a few recent stories about being with the RSO kiddos:
Everyday from 4:30 - 6:00 is playtime for the kids. They are free to run around outside, play on the playground, play soccer...basically do whatever they please that doesn't involve major injury or harm to another human being. A few days ago I went over to playtime just to say hi and hang out with the kids (my intentions were to maybe sit with one of the quieter girls and just have a little chat). As soon as I got there, though, two of my favorite little boys from 1st standard, Christraj and Veeran, ran over and started climbing all over me. As I always do when the kids start climbing on me, I started referring to the boys as monkeys (monkey #1 and monkey #2 respectively). Karthik (another 1st standard boy) saw how much fun it is to climb all over Kenady ma'am and started joining in--I now had three monkeys hanging off my neck and breaking my back. Being the idiot that I am, my way of getting the boys to stop climbing on me was to be extremely dramatic, break-out the excited hands, and yell "STOP MONKEYS!!" The boys thought this was absolutely hilarious and copied me hands and all, "STOP MONKEYS!!" Now, in a testament to my background in performing, I realized I had a very captive audience--something that may be good to capitalize on. And in a testament to my idiocy, I wanted to see how far I could take this whole monkey-thing. I bowed to the boys and said "Thank you monkeys, " in my best wise sensei voice--they copied me exactly. Now came the ultimate test.....I ran away. And, lo and behold, my instincts were right--they ran right after me. I repeated the "stop and thank you monkeys" dialogue with the boys copying after each--they were loving this. By this point we had two more monkeys join the crew, Karthik Raja (a boy from second standard) and Archana (a first standard girl). Again, after I said "thank you monkeys" I bolted, this time clear across the playground. I later had another volunteer tell me that it was the funniest thing she had seen all week--seeing me running full-tilt across the playground with five kids running behind me. We continued on with the monkey game for the rest of playtime. We crept around the playground, hid behind trees, pretended to be dead monkeys...basically anything that popped into my head. What made it all better, though, was that the kids were laughing and playing and loving every minute of it. They all had their monkey numbers memorized (halfway through the game I stopped referring to them by their name, only by their monkey number) and were sad when the bell rang to signal that playtime was over for the day. I bowed and said good-bye to my monkeys before I headed off to dinner--just another afternoon with the kids at RSO.
At playtime with Veeran and Archana--two of the monkey children. (Archana's face kills me in this picture btw).
Everyday between 7:30 and 9:30pm is deemed family time with the kids. This is the kid's time before bed to finish homework, read books, and just generally get ready for bed. I try to stop in at all the houses during this time and say goodnight to everyone but I usually stay a little longer at Jayanthi's house--this was my designated house last summer and it holds a special place in my heart. Most of the girls from this house remembered my good night ritual from last year (kissing my hand then touching their head and then doing the 'I love you' hand signal) so I have continued it on this year...as well as adding to it. There is something about being in a foreign country that lowers your inhibitions because I do things here in India that I don't do in the States....like sing in public. I am by no means a singer....not even a little bit. So, the fact that the minute I go into Jayanthi's house now and she immediately starts telling the girls, "Ok, lay down! Kenady is going to sing with you now!"shows that crazy stuff happens when you're in India. Naturally, the first song I taught them as the new in-house singer was "Baby" by Justin Bieber. They had actually heard this song on the radio and requested to learn it....so I obliged. Now, every night they request to sing the baby song. I contest that there is nothing better in the world than singing Justin Bieber with 30 little indian girls--it's the ultimate girl's night. Video of this is coming soon.
Just one more story for the road...
As previously mentioned, I like to stop by all the houses during family time. Last night, after I sang with the girls, I headed over to the boy's hostel to Kala's house. Kala is basically a rockstar who has managed to exert herself as the most respected housemother and teacher at Rising Star while still having an AMAZING sense of humor and immense love for all the kids. Because she is so awesome, and I love the kids in her house, I spend a lot of time there. Last night was particularly great because by the time I got there all the little monkeys (ukg - 3rd standard boys) had gone to sleep. I walked into one of the back rooms where the older boys hang out, to find Kim 2 and Rebecca having all sorts of nonsense fun with the boys...I immediately joined in. We did everything from fake ninja fighting to jumping contests to the macarena...yep, we literally busted out the macarena folks. At one point Deepenraj (an 8th standard boy) pretended to hit Ashok (a 7th standard boy) over the head with a weight (don't ask). Being the crazy kid he is, Ashok proceeded to pretend that he could not remember who he was or why he was at Rising Star--he could have gotten an Oscar for his performance because he WOULD NOT break character. He was roaming around the whole room acting completely lost and confused...it was hilarious. Then he kicked it up a notch and decided that he would pretend to be dead. Again, his performance was Oscar worthy because as much as the other boys tickled and moved him he wouldn't wake-up. Finally, Kala said, "Well, if he is dead then let's go take him to the garbage." The other boys capitalized on this advice and proceeded to pick-up Ashok and carry him to the garbage. You would think that the prospect of being put in a garbage can would be enough to make the kid break character....it was not. Ashok continued to play dead and let the other boys deposit him straight into the garbage can...and he stayed there dead.
Ashok would not budge....therefore we got plenty of pictures
It wasn't until the other boys had lifted him out of the garbage and started putting him into the large bathroom sink that he finally woke-up and broke character. George Clooney better watch out because Ashok is an up-and-comer for sure.
On the way to the bathroom sink with help from Kim 2...what great role-models we are.
Well, I hope these little anecdotes have brightened your day, entertained you at work, or helped you further procrastinate a research paper/ studying for a test.
