Day 1

We have arrived! It has been quite the journey. I went to the SLC airport on Saturday morning, then 1 book, 2 movies, 3 flights, and 4 new friends later we arrived in Chennai, India airport. Somewhere in the mix of all that was a Sunday, but we have no recollection of it. We did a really good job at keeping the American stereotype as they searched our suitcases half full of food. There were four of us girls- all happen to be blonde- and everyone found that rather unique so most people just stared at us.  It was 1:30 am and we needed to get from the airport to our hotel (which was about 7 miles away). This was easily the scariest chapter of the journey.... Just a dark, dirty, big city... all on our own. All the security personnel at the airport carried these machine guns and asked us lots of questions (which were apparently in English, but you wouldn't have known). The whole taxi ride I was wishing my dad was Liam Neeson just in case the driver decided to take us somewhere besides the hotel. We drove around some cows and threw some red lights then arrived at the hotel. Safe at last. A few hours of sleep and a breakfast later we were able to meet up with everyone who is in our session. The group is great! (more on this later) We drove south for a few hours and, finally, arrived at our ultimate destination, the Rising Star Outreach Campus. This place is amazing.

On campus there is a fairly large school for the children of those afflicted with leprosy. (In India, if your parent has leprosy, then you are denied an education). The children live here 10-11 months out of the year and receive a high quality education. They learn english, computer skills, all the main classes (math, science, writing) and therefore have a huge advantage when they graduate. The children have a separate building they sleep and live in. They are arranged in "families" which consist of about 20 kids assigned a house mother who is a traditional Indian woman. Each "house" is three rooms and the children just sleep in snuggled up on the floor. There is another building called the "Elephant House" where all the volunteers live. 

Today we mostly settled in and played with the children. They are so sweet and funny. They call us "Auntie!" and make you feel a lot cooler than you are. My favorite part of the day was putting some of the girls to sleep. This sweet little 3 year old wanted me to sing her some "baby songs". So I went through the list of songs my mom would sing to me and she would get so excited when she knew them and would sing along. But she still kept asking me to sing her the, "baby song".... little did I know... the child actual had some Bieber Fever and was requesting the apparently popular, "Baby, baby, baby, oh" by Justing Bieber. This is the part in the night where I become significantly less cool because I only knew the chorus. It seems I have some homework to do.