Quiet Sunday at Hope Clinic

Today the group kept things pretty low-key. About half of us kids started off the morning around 7:30am with some yoga on the upstairs terrace. After that we all ate breakfast and lazed around awhile before throwing on our work clothes and walking over to the clinic. The group split in half and some of us worked on painting one of the two buildings, the other group went upstairs in the other building to work on organizing all of the books we brought.

The library organization ended up being a bit more of a task than we had originally expected as we realized there was no real point in organizing the books we brought, if we just threw them into the jumble that currently exists. So we plan on continuing our expedition for organization over the next several mornings in hopes of leaving the clinic's readers a library where they can easily find something for their reading level and interest.

As kids found solid stopping points in their work down at the clinic, we returned  to the house and began showering and cleaning up for lunch before our afternoon excursion into the nearby neighborhood. It was great finally meeting all the locals! Everyone is very friendly and excited to meet us. We felt like movie stars as we walked down the village streets. People came right out of their homes to get a better look at us, and many people wanted to get their pictures taken. Communication was difficult due to the language barrier, but not impossible. Lolli translated their Malayalam into English for us and vise versa, so we were able to have conversations with them. By the end of our excursion we had learned a lot about their lives and families.  It was truly eye opening to see such a different kind of lifestyle from our own, such as four generations living in one household at a time, and directly living off the land.

After our walk through the neighborhood, we went back to the house. We spent a lot of time relaxing, doing our homework, and bouncing around ideas of what we should do for our next performances for the other high schools.  Tomorrow we plan on heading out to the Indian Ocean for a day at the beach. Read up later!