Sorry for the recent silence in my blog. It is very difficult and costly to access the internet here.

To start off, I will officially be staying here until December. Also, a lot of things have happened the past couple of weeks.

First, I have been moved into a cottage with seven girls and one new caretaker. They are all the girls who tend to cause more trouble or have attitudes. I'm teaching the new caretaker how to set rules and enforce them and also how to come alongside the girls and love them. There are a lot of issues with the staff right now since they're all new.

Also, there is a cottage of five young boys (Murali, Manoj, Deepak, Gowtham, and Karthic, for those who know them) and two college boys (Satish and Madesh--they're in college!! crazy!!). Anyways, I meet with them every couple of days to teach them how to run a cottage and try to teach them how to better love and not hit the younger boys. Those are always fun meetings.

Every night I am in charge of the study time for all 14 boys--who, I should add, when they want your attention go "auntie, auntie, auntie, auntie, auntie (x14)". It's crazy, but really fun.

Additionally, three days a week I work with six of the "untouchable" women in the village making jewelry with them. This is their only job (325 rupees a week (60 rps/dollar)), so their payday is always a highlight of my week since they are so happy and grateful. I'm slowly learning more about them and hope to be able to get them to teach me about the village for my community assessment work. I haven't done much on that yet, but God is slowly opening the doors to it, so it's good.

Also the education system here is frustrating, to put it nicely. Most of the time the teachers check the homework and tell them it is correct and to study (all exams are just memorization of the book work), but when I look, it's wrong at least 90% of the time. Also LF really needs a math teacher, so that is a prayer request.

Also, for my birthday the kids were adorable. The girls did my hair, made me a special home-made bouquet, and put flower confetti on the fan and turned it on as they sang. It was really sweet.

I hope to be able to update this again soon!

Love Always,
Amanda