!!Summer Camp!!

The past two weeks have been real great. I mentioned in my last post that I was going to be running a summer camp for kids in the slums. Last Thursday was actually my last day with them. In addition to that, I participated in a program called GLOW for teenage girls as well as took a weekend vacation to Bangalaore, visited the Gandhi Hospital, etc. I will post separately about Bangalore and the hospital so you can check those out.

SO...the summer camp was kinda crazy. I initially planned on working with a group of about sixty 5-11 year olds and had every day planned out before we began. I was to give them notebooks which we would review the ABC's, math, colors, and English. We were gonna dance our pants off, play some games, eat some treats, and be awesome. Most of those things happened, but everything was not as I expected.

The first day of summer camp I planned to get my group of 60 kids put into groups where we would give them their notebooks and decorate them. When I showed up however, there about 70-80 kids ranging from the age of baby to 15. I was totally thrown off and had to readjust my schedule completely. Besides not being able to directly communicate with the kids, (they speak Telugu but we had some translators) it was hard/sad because I couldn't give notebooks to all of the kids...even the babies wanted one. So instead of handing them out to specific kids, we danced and played games like duck-duck-goose and down by the banks. The kids went bizonk over duck duck goose. They were all pointing to themselves because they wanted to be the goose so they could get up so they could giggle as they ran. There were almost a few head on collisions with  the other groups playing around us. It was such and interesting fun day, and I realized that from that point on, things were going to be quite different in the sense that I had no idea what to expect. Ever.

The following days after the first two got better. We were able to bring order the children, though there was a wild child or 4 that refused to comply with most instructions we gave. But we learned to go with the flow. Some days fewer kids showed up, allowing us to pay more attention to each child, while on others we found that the ability to sit still and focus replaced the urge of being rambunctious hooligan children, or vice versa.

The kids were really awesome. I've never interacted with a group of kids like them. Not just because they're Indian and could hardly understand English, but because they came from living conditions unlike any that I've been around before. Some lived in small one room cement houses, but others lived in little shacks and tents. The roads were dirt and most of the children walked around in their bare feet around garbage and nasty puddles. Not to mention all the turds lying around. So many turds. I even saw a child pooping off the side of the road as we took the bus to the slums.

It was hard seeing this because I felt like they were my little cousins and I want so much more for them. Things are very different here, but as lame and cheesy as this sounds, I really have been able to appreciate what kind of life my family and I have back home so much more.

Soooooooo overall summer camp was pretty awesome. It was stressful but rewarding all the same. I came to love the children as they listened ande leardn what we had come to teach them. They were sooo precious.