First few days...

Hello All Readers!

The past two days have been great!
Yesterday (Monday) was our first volunteer day at the orphanage. We were all really busy all day and got to spend a lot of time with all of the younger children and babies. The older kids all go to school during the day so we don't really get to spend a lot of time with them but the younger kids are still great! A group of us went over to Harry's House yesterday in the afternoon. Harry's house is where all the younger boys stay. It is about a 10 minute walk from the main orphanage location. We played a very tiring game of hide and seek/tag which they all beat us in. We can all say now that we have a lot less energy than little boys and that it's really hard to win a game of catch when you have 5 people trying to catch 20 or 30 little boys. One of the things we enjoyed most was being called Auntie, Uncle, Anna (brother), Sister and Mr. Brickell being called Daddy (but to us, he'll always be "Handsome").

Today (Tuesday) we left the orphanage early in the morning. We drove through Coimbatore to the Chin Maya IB school. The drive was amazing and the view from the school was breathtaking! The buildings were surrounded by mountains and beautiful flowers and trees. When we got to the school we were greeted by their IB coordinator who gave us a tour of the campus. We were also lucky to visit the school on a grade 12 exam day and we were able to join the students in a "good luck prayer". After our tour and prayer session, we were able to attend a class with the IB1 students (grade 11 IB). The boys attended physics and the girls went to economics. After the class, we all went to the Audio Visual room (like an auditorium) where we discussed TOK and the Extended Essay. It was really interesting to hear what the other students had to say about these IB topics. It was really awkward though because they were very aggressive. After this discussion we were given time to socialize about anything we wanted with the Chin Maya students. We were able to take pictures and exchange emails as well as find out a lot about their boarding school experience. We then enjoyed an Indian lunch with the students in their dining hall. After visiting the IB school, we went to the Isha Yoga Centre where we experienced some highly spiritual meditation. We stood in highly purified water where we were able to gain new energy and we meditated in a beautiful temple. The experience was amazing as it was a first time experience for all of us. After our meditation session we went to the largest temple in Coimbatore. At this temple we saw an elephant and walked around in our bare feet. We saw many spiritual statues and our driver Ravi gave us a lot of information on the background of the temple. It was also an incredible experience.

We are looking forward to our 3 day voyage to the mountains in Ooty where we will be visiting a tea plantation and taking a train within the hill stations.