Post # 9: The last few days.

Last Wednesday early evening my family arrived at Pathway at the beginning of the children’s study time. Not the best time in terms of how much of a distraction they were, but nonetheless, everyone was as happy as ever to see them. Haley and Emily were confused when they were suddenly dubbed as “sisters” and my parents even more so when they were called grandma and grandpa. I had to explain that this is what they called every adult when they visited, and it meant that they basically considered them to be family.

The next day my family helped me to prepare for the kids art show that afternoon. I had already cleaned some of the classroom by myself the day before, but there was still a lot to do. How the kids managed to get paint on every single surface down to the last doorknob in that room, I don’t know. I’m glad I had 4 extra sets of hands to help me out. After all of the cleaning was finished and the room set up in an exhibit kind of style, I put up the best of the kids art work, and we all headed to lunch.

This is just a side note, talking about lunch reminded me of it, but Indian tea is honestly the best drink in the world. I had only been drinking the filtered water that they gave me, sometimes with the Gatorade mix that I had brought (but that really only lasted me about 2 days). Being a coffee drinker, I hadn’t had caffeine until a couple of weeks ago when one of the workers offered the tea to me. All it is is boiled and strained milk that has been steeped with tealeaves and about 3 pounds of sugar per cup, but it’s good stuff.

Anyways, after lunch I finished my mural. I had drawn 2 of the children from Pathway on the wall on the entrance to the cafeteria, and I had to finish painting them. They turned out to be a boy who caught a lizard (there are loads of those here) and a girl reading her English book under a tree- who were both in their Pathway uniforms of course.

At 4 o’clock was to be the art show for the kids. Dr. Prasad, Chandra, Sudha and Dhuli would arrive later after they arrived from Special Olympics. One of the workers had insisted that I wore one of my saris for the occasion, and helped me wrap it. It took about 20 minutes, but it’s worth it. They’re fun to wear once you get the hang of walking around in 10 yards of material at a time. The art show was a huge success. All of the 7th and 8th graders came in first to see all of their work hung up and displayed. Their faces lit up- I don’t think they have ever had their work properly displayed for everyone to see like that before. Even they shy kids were proud of their work, and didn’t mind having it on the wall, which was a big change from a couple of weeks ago, when they would take it down if they saw it on display anywhere in the school. After the 7th and 8th graders had taken a good look at their work, the rest of the school and most of the teachers came by to see the work. Later Dr. Prasad and Chandra took a look, and they seemed to like the work, which made me happy. Not only had I worked hard to achieve everything but the kids had done more than they ever expected to do in their arts education. We did a lot more than the average art class in 5 weeks.

After the art show was over, Chandra announced that since my family and I were leaving tomorrow, they would not have study that night, and they could all sit outside with us and play instead. Haley and Emily and I brought out all of the gifts that they had brought from America and distributed them. We brought bubbles, candy, friendship bracelet string, nail polish, and soccer balls for all of the kids. It was like Christmas, but better, because the kids were ten times more grateful than anyone I had ever given anything to.

The next day, after many goodbye hugs to all of the children and the teachers and even some of the cooks and workers we set out on the 2-hour car ride to Chennai.

That Friday afternoon we went to the Pathway center in Chennai. The night before Dr. Prasad and Chandra had invited us to come and see the whole facility as I had mentioned before that I had never been there before. The facility was beautiful, and quite astonishing in terms of how many people a day it served. I was amazed. Chandra served us a beautiful traditional vegetarian lunch, where we all sat down and ate together for the last time. Later while Haley, Emily, my dad, and I toured around the beautiful center, my mother and Sudha went to sort some things out at immigration. We are all very thankful that Sudha could take the time out of her already-busy day to go with my mom. She was very helpful.

Later we said goodbye to everyone, and of course, promised to come back. Pathway is a wonderful place where if you are even just visiting for a day you are able to see the warmth and hard work put into everything that they do for all of the kids. I definitely wish to return at some point, by myself, or hopefully with the rest of my family. It was made an impact on my life, and hopefully after making my contribution I have made at least a smaller one on theirs.

For the next 2 weeks I will be traveling around Northern India with my family, and then return to America. In the beginning of September I will start school in Switzerland.