Party Til the End: Part Three

Once everyone had composed themselves and gotten their emotions under control, they were left with TONS of energy--the "post performance, I just changed the world" high. The night of the event happened to also be the birthday of the founder/president of Mona Vie. They had a huge chocolate cake for him backstage that they cut into and shared with the kids once the night had come to a close. Since they had finished crying, the kids were all beaming and basking in all that had happened. 

Besides getting flowers, all the kids also took turns wearing an AWESOME flower hat that was given to them by the Mona Vie staff. Here is V's turn rockin the hat...how can you resist that smile?!?!

As mentioned above, the cake was huge so they loaded all the kids' plates. C. Vignesh and Arun didn't have slices...they had MOUNDS of chocolate cake.

No better way to celebrate a great performance than with cake :) Here's Soniya, Krishnamoorthy, and Ambiga

At some point, the kids started smearing cake on each other's faces...naturally this escalated into an all out cake-face-smearing war between all the kids, volunteers, and even some of the Mona Vie staff. Joseph eluded being "caked" for awhile but when he finally got smeared he got smeared good--straight across his nose and cheeks. He looked so stinkin cute with his sad, cake-smeared face that I had to get a picture.

The whole gang (as well as some random Mona Vie people) with cake-smeared faces

Before taking off back to the apartment, we crammed into the bathroom and attempted to get the cake off our faces and hair.

We got to the kids' apartment around midnight and finally sat down to a real dinner. The kids don't get to watch TV at Rising Star so they took full advantage of having a TV in every bedroom. It was so nice to end the night with everyone hanging out like one big, happy family. It was perfection.

A nice family dinner....at midnight.

Just as we were getting ready to leave the kids for the night and head back to the hotel, I was walking around saying goodnight to everyone and saw these two (Ashok and Arun) as cute as can be all curled up in bed watching a Tamil movie after a long, successful day. I just can't get over how cute these kids are.

We took some time the next day to sleep-in and relax because we had all had such a full, exciting day. We got on the road around 10am and started the long drive back to Rising Star. This time around there was far less puking (only one person threw-up twice!) and a lot more sleeping. Everyone was seriously wiped out....I guess changing people's lives does that to ya. We made it back to Rising Star in 9.5 hours and everyone parted ways and headed to bed.

At the restaurant where we ate breakfast, Deepan was practicing using a fork and spoon. I just adore this kid.

We ate some seriously good parota for lunch at this awesome roadside stand. The kids LOVE parota and they don't get it at Rising Star so this was quite the treat for them. This was the kitchen and cooks--right smack in the action.

Back at the Green House after we had gotten everyone off the bus and sent to bed, Kelli, Derek, and I were all swapping pictures and we commented that it seemed as if the weekend had been a dream. It had been filled with so many emotions and unforgettable moments that it almost didn't seem real. It was truly a beautiful weekend that I am so blessed to have been apart of and will never forget.

Vanakkam