Blessings – Coleton

I was supposed to write this blog post two days ago and was successful in not writing today until Payton ratted me out to Amy. So now I am writing this blog post because they won’t let me eat dinner until I do it. I don’t really know what to write about because we have been touring Shimla the past two days. I guess I’ll briefly tell you all what we’ve done in Shimla and then talk about the kids more because I love and miss them so much. Yesterday we had pretty much a free day in Shimla where we could go explore and look around the beautiful city as we pleased. We also did a big group yoga session that was pretty relaxing except for the fact that the entire room smelled like B.O. Today we visited the Monkey Temple that sits on the highest peak in Shimla, we had to wake up early to hike there because it gets too busy during the day but because we got there so early there were hardly any monkeys out. After we visited the Monkey Temple we had free time to do whatever and then had a Bollywood dance lesson. Now that I’ve given you the rundown of our touring in Shimla I will tell you all about what I really care about. On Monday we spent the last day with our kids in our school for our village. Monday was easily the hardest and most emotional day out of all of them. When we were all packed in the car on the way to our school there was a somber mood in the group and no one really talked as we all just prepared for what the day would bring.

Coming into the trip I was very scared that I wouldn’t connect with the kids as much as I hoped. After the first two days I was struggling to find a connection with the majority of the kids, obviously I had some kids that already held dear places in my heart but I felt bad because I wanted to be close with all the kids. It was especially hard because our school had 38 kids in it when the second biggest school had 23 in it so there were a lot more kids to try to get to know. On the third day I honestly don’t know what happened but the kids just decided that they liked me. I literally had to tell the kids to stop jumping on me because there were too many kids and it was getting unsafe. It was on this day that I realized how hard Monday would be and that the best thing I could do was cherish the time with the kids. At first I cherished my time with the kids by being fun with them and playing around with them, but then I realized that if I really loved and cared for these kids that the best thing I could do was make sure that they learned the English that I was teaching. Even though it wasn’t as fun as playing around with the kids I know that by reviewing the flash cards with them instead of playing games the kids were able to better retain the English and in turn better their outlook on life. I hope that these kids can take these lessons to heart and continue their lives upward and onward.