19/1-25/1: A Ground Breaking week

So this week was a ground breaking week.  Monday morning an engineer came to the office to go over the measurements he had taken last week for the new school building at the home with Daddy.  Later that evening with the help of Ishwar, Laxman, Prakash and Shamu they began marking the dimensions of the first three classrooms.  The first classrooms are going to be, I believe, for 1^st standard, 2^nd standard and 3^rd standard.  After all the chalk was laid it was time to bless the land.  Daddy led the kids in prayer and Ishwar read from the Bible.  After the land was prayed for Daddy asked me if I would be the first to break the ground.  “I break this land in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” and with a swift blow from my pick the land was broken.  The reason they want to build classrooms at the home is because the kids get treated differently at the government school.  The kids often get singled out because they are Christian, and “rich” and are constantly being asked, “Why are you praying?  Why are you Christian?”  But the funny thing is, if it wasn’t for our children, the schools wouldn’t get the funding they get because our children raise the bar academically for the schools.  The next night I watched the inauguration of Baby Killer, or BK for short, with Mommy and Daddy.  It was, however, awesome to see that America has finally woken up and realized this isn’t the 1800’s anymore.  I listened to his extensive list of promises and found out the next morning found out that he suspended a program that has been working for the last seven years.  He’s basically saying that terrorist deserve more human rights than babies.  Dianne Feinstein was right when she said, “The world is watching.”  And as she said this I thought how funny that was.  The whole world was watching the inauguration of the US president, but American’s don’t watch, or even care about, any inaugurations of other presidents, not even Canada or England.  I then became tired of all the discussion on Michelle’s outfit.  Even BBC and an English-Indian news station were discussing it.  The day was for her husband, not her, and she was smart enough to know that and let the spotlight shine on Barack.  So my impressions of BK on his first five days are this: I’m upset at his moral principles and I wish his first order as Commander in Chief was to turn every Arab nation into glass.  I read just last week an article that schools in Pakistan are teaching their kids that “A” is for allah, “D” is for dagger, “J” is for jihad and there was another one I can’t remember that was for gun.  Now this isn’t just some school or teacher teaching this, this is in the textbooks of the government schools.  The hatred of Muslims is so strong here in India, I can’t believe there are actually Muslims that live here.

Thursday morning a drunk guy came into the home and grabbed me right in front of all the kids and asked me for Rs. 20.  What happened was I was sitting in front of the kids while they were studying and Prakash went to the gate to see what this guy wanted.  I guess he knows Mommy and was coming to see her.  He then made his way down the driveway, walking straight toward me.  He shook my hand, he reeked of alcohol, and asked if I was from US.  I said yes and then he grabbed my hand and started talking in Marathi and all I could make out was “…20 rupees.”  I wasn’t afraid for myself, I was afraid for the kids and their safety.  I didn’t know what this guy was going to do or if he was going to come back later.  And what made me even more upset was that he asked Prakash for Rs. 10, and me for 20.  I joked with Laxman about it and then looked at my watch and said, “It’s 8 o’clock in the morning?”  He said, “This is India.”  A classic.  The next morning I came out of the guesthouse at 7:55 to find some of the boys throwing rocks at another drunk man outside the gate.  I guess this guy wanted us to give him work.

Some highlights from this week.  On Thursday I was thoroughly entertained by taking funny faced pictures of the girls.  It all started when I was trying to take a picture of Usha.  She was walking away from me but turned to look back right as the picture was taken.  Her eyes were half shut and she had the goofiest grin on her face.  I thought this picture was hilarious.  I then got a great idea.  I would go up to other girls, laughing and say, “Look at this picture of Usha.”  I would hold the camera as if I was going to show them the LCD screen.  As soon as they got close I would quickly turn the camera and take a picture of them.  Another trick I used was I would say the same thing and pretend to show one of the kids the LCD screen.  What I was really doing was taking a picture of the kid right next to them, who for some reason were always staring at the lens.  I then found out the next day that you could fool them twice when I used the same tricks on the same kids.  These pictures are hilarious, see for yourself on Facebook.  It’s the album titled “The Beautiful Girls of Lasina” but what it should have been titled was “The Beautiful Girls, and Samson, of Lasina”.  I showed all the girls their lovely photos and they all told me to “cut” their picture.  Instead, I posted them on the Internet.  Yesterday I told them I posted them for Cleveland, Doug, Lu, my family and friends to see.  Yesterday I also became a chapatti expert.  My job was to roll the dough into a thin circle and then hand it to Usha for frying.  My first one didn’t turn out so good and all the girls laughed and said that one was mine.  My next five were so perfect, you would have thought I had been rolling for years.  I then told the girls who laughed at me that those perfect ones were mine too then.  I got a shave on Friday and while I was waiting at the barber, my girls were waiting to catch a 6-seater to take them to high school.  They yelled across the town for me not to get a haircut.  I yelled back that I was only getting a shave but they also told me not to.  I’m glad I didn’t listen to them.  The shave was amazing.  I had been letting my hair grow so he had something to shave.  He started by lathering up my face with oil and giving me a face massage.  Then the shave, which makes you feel like you’re going to get whacked.  Then another amazing face massage with oils and powders followed by him pounding my head like he was in some bongo drum band.  As I sat there watching him slap my head, rub my head, squeeze my head and punch my head, I thought, “I don’t know how he is doing it, but this is the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced.

Everybody sleeps at the home and Daddy takes Mommy every morning to work and comes back in the afternoon.  Sometimes I go with them.