Day 12: I say good bye to India

Hey there Readers,

Once again I was awoken by the orphans next door coming up to the room but as it was my last day I decided to sleep for a bit longer and then get up. The first thing I wanted to do was go to the Prakash Deep School one last time before we leave and that’s exactly what we did. After breakfast we got in the rickshaw that would take us to the school with Hannah. We set off and when we arrived, we were greeted by Sabita and I was told to teach her class while she talked with Mom. This happened to be the class with my friends and I had a pretty good time dictating a spelling test and correcting them. After this the guys invited me to play basketball with them just outside the school area, and I said sure. I may not be 6 foot and a pro at basketball (like my uncle) but I played on the team in middle school and I was reasonably good. It was loads of fun and I almost fell into the barbed wire that kept the cows out but other than that it was nice. After a few hours at the school, our rickshaw showed up on time (for once) and we had to say our goodbyes. The whole school gathered together and Sabita gave Mom and me amazing gifts to thank us for volunteering and helping out. I made sure to get all of my friends names so that I could write to them every now and then and it wasn’t until that moment that you realize how attached you get. They were all saying goodbye and I don’t want to sound all emotional but it was very heartwarming. All three of us set off to the accommodations of the volunteers who would work at the school and we stayed there for a bit and checked them out. Next, we were headed to an all girls’ orphanage which would be interesting since I’m the only guy their age they’ve seen in a while. When we arrived we were immediately led to the volunteer who had been working there for four months already, Allie. I was really impressed with her because she knew all 88 girls by name and was completely immersed in her duties as a volunteer. First we went to get lunch and she brought us downstairs into the dining room. This consisted of a rather large room with mats lining the walls as chairs and two entrances: the doorway we just walked through and the kitchen. There were flies all over the place and she brought us some interesting looking stew with rice. I was a little nervous eating this (so was Mom) but we managed somehow. She showed us around and wherever we went I got two reactions. From the smaller girls they would just hide and giggle and from my age up they just watched me. It got a bit unnerving after a while, not going to lie. Once the tour was over we went back to Allie’s room where we found 8 girls playing cards. They asked if we wanted to join and Allie and I said yes. First we played Mafia, a game I actually have played in drama before and then a game involving spoons. I got out fairly quickly the first time but the second time I managed to stay in longer. We stopped playing after a while and the girls started interrogating Allie, asking her questions about me like whether I had a girlfriend or not. Half an hour later we had said our goodbyes and were back in our rickshaw heading back to Bandhu’s where we would spend our final night in India. That evening we had a good time with Kranti, Bandhu, B, and Hannah and Mom ended up doing makeovers at midnight for the girls.  They seemed to love it – can’t really understand that topic.  Anyway, we had a great last evening and had to get up at 4 am to go to the airport for our flight home. It kind of hurt to say goodbye to everybody since they had such a bigger impact on our lives than we would have ever expected. But I’m going to write some more on that another time.