Chennai/Service Day 1

Today was a pretty busy day.  We woke up pretty late and had breakfast.  The hotel did have western food for breakfast, but I mostly ate the Indian food.  Then, we got on a bus and we headed off to the Elephant house.  The Elephant house gets power outages all the time.  We have gotten three today.  They don't last very long, though. The bus was tiny, and there were only 3 other volunteers with us on the bus; one girl from Hawaii, and a mother and son from Colorado.  We traveled south for about 2 hours, with the exception of a stop to the Indian grocery store to buy some snacks and juice for breakfast.  The other 7 volunteers met up with us later because they got up and went to church.  Rising Star Outreach isn't run by the LDS church, but the owner is a church member, so most of the volunteers are LDS.  The campus is small; the Elephant house (where we are staying), the school, the building where the kids sleep, and some small play areas/fields for the kids.  We had orientation and we met with the kids today.  They are the sweetest kids ever!  Right when we walked into their play area, they all ran to us and hovered around us.  They were hanging on us and saying our names (we had name tags on), and telling us about them.  They kept calling my mom and dad grandma and grandpa even thought they told the kids that they were only 30.  It was so funny to see them climb all over my dad's lap during the movie.  We got to watch to movies, both is Tamil, their native tongue.  They were really... interesting.  The first movie was extremely violent, so they had to keep on covering the screen at the bloody scenes.  The second movie didn't have english subtitles, so we had absolutely no idea what was going on.  Even Jake had kids hanging on him, and he was carrying them around on his shoulders.  Sadly, I met so many kids, I forgot each name after about 5 seconds.  It was so fun to meet these kids and see all of their different personalities.  They were all so excited to see us.  They all wanted a piece of us.  It was such an amazing thing to see all of these kids with so little, yet they are so happy.  And that is the same with the volunteer coordinators here, too.  They are just balls of energy and happiness, and they serve all summer.  Being here really does redefine the term "service with a smile".  We barely even served anyone today, but yet, we did.  Just playing with the kids, and sitting down with them at dinner was a service to them.  They love everything that we do.

Tomorrow, we go to the colonies.  At first I was really nervous, but I talked to one of the teachers for the kids, and she said that you will feel so much love and compassion for these people that it will just come out when you see them.  So, we will see what happens.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures for this post today, but there will be some tomorrow.  It is so weird to think that it is only noon on Sunday there, but it is 10:00 on Sunday night here.  There is an 10 1/2 hour difference from here to Minnesota.  So, it's almost flipped upside down.  Luckily, we are pretty used to it.  The other volunteers are suffering from some serious jet lag since they just got to India last night.  We have been here for a few days, so we are in better shape then most of the volunteers here.  I am exhausted, so I will blog more tomorrow.  Goodnight!