Our school again!

Monday was Taryne’s birthday and she was wished a Happy Birthday as soon as she opened her eyes. Felicia had brought a card, which we all signed, and Sandy had thoughtfully wrapped some prunes up in a Ziploc for her. What can we say? We make birthdays in India a big deal okay?
We power-barred it for breakfast to get out of the hotel quick in order to hopefully avoid another long traffic delay in getting to the town**. However, best-laid plans oft go awry and the bus which was intended to pick us up at 7:00, instead arrived at 7:40. We made up time though by simply avoiding the city streets altogether.
The three hour trip went by quite quickly and we planned on the bus how we were going to split the team so that we could run our programs as soon as we got there. Thank you Myra and Larry for using for organization and administration gifts!
Before we got to the school to see the kids, the Community Development Officer (CDO) had arranged for us to plant some trees that will form a line from the gate to the school. All of the hard work was done for us, what with the holes being dug already. Brandon was a little disappointed to not be able to fully show his landscaping abilities but all of the ladies were happy the heavy lifting was done. We planted and watered the mango and palm trees and then it was off to the kids!
The kids seemed pretty excited to have us back and the interaction was clearly less overwhelming for them. It was so amazing to have the whole day devoted to our little sweeties and to be able to laugh and play and just be silly with them. We may have hindered their academic progress by a day but the time spent together with them was absolutely invaluable.
At the end of our visit we got the whole school together and sang some songs together. We gave them each a heart shaped container that had jellybeans in them. They became music makers until some of the kids discovered that the innards were edible. We made a joyful noise to the Lord nonetheless.
Finally, right before we left we gave each child a backpack that we had made by some of the Lydia workshops. They have a small maple leaf and say Canada on them. The kids were excited to have them but wanted to keep them in the plastic so that they would stay nice.
It was hard to say goodbye to them but we had to, so we did.

**Name changed to protect our school/town