The weekend!

First of all I’m sorry I have only blogged twice! The internet here is so sporadic!! As I am typing this I still have no internet I am just waiting for it to come!! So this weekend has been awesome!! As I mentioned before my luggage got lost in the Mumbai airport and I have not had any luggage this past week. On Friday a driver took me to the airport which is 3 hours away, to report my missing luggage. My mom tried to do it but because I’m over 18 they wouldn’t let her. I hate being an adult!! Haha. I brought one of the nurses with me named Daphi because she speaks awesome Tamil and English!! She was so sweet to come so far with me. It was so fun to talk with her on the car ride. We talked a lot about marriage. Daphi is 25 and not married yet and for India that is old to not be married. But to me she is still so young!! She was so bummed out because she said that her parents are in no rush to look for a boy for her. I asked her if she wanted a love marriage or arranged and she said she wanted arranged. I am always so shocked when they all tell me they want arranged! So about my luggage we went back today after church to get it because they flew it in from Mumbai and my airline decided to be closed even though all the other airlines were opened today!! Hahahahah “TII”. Worst things have happened but I’m not going to lie, I cannot wait to have food, CLEAN clothes, face wash, a tooth brush, deoderant and shower stuff!!! Wooohooo one more day!!! ☺ Hopefully hahaha.
So here in India all the volunteers are assigned a “house”. At Rising Star all the kids live at the school and have a house mother who is either a widow or not married yet. In each house there is about 20-30 kids. I got assigned to an all girls house. The same house I had last year! I’ll call it Sarahswati’s house because she is the house mother! I was assigned her house last year as well ☺ As I was putting the girls to bed we started talking about marriage because here if you wear two toe rings on each second toe that means that you are married and all the volunteers and I got those toe rings last year just because they look pretty haha and all the Indian girls tease me and say MARRIAGE AUNTIE?!?!?! Well I was asking them which they want love marriages or arranged. Every single girl had the same answer. Arranged. I was so shocked!! I asked them why they wanted arranged instead of love. They told me if you have a love marriage with a guy that he will beat you and no one will help you. They were saying that your parents know better than you do and that we make bad choices for ourselves haha. But they said if you have arranged marriage and your husband beats you then you can go to your parent’s house but if you have a love marriage and your husband beats you then you can’t go to your mom’s house. One of the little girls Satija had two older sisters who had love marriages and they both get abused by their husbands and she said she doesn’t feel sorry for them at all and that no family will help them . It’s so sad!!! I understand that it is just how the other side of the world works and stuff but ugh my heart breaks for these girls!! I asked isn’t it scary to have to marry a guy you’ve never met and they say no! I guess it depends on the situation though and where they are on the cast system. I know they say the cast system is now “illegal” in India but everyone still lives by it. I’ve met two house mothers that have had to get married and were so upset about their marriages. As I said before Saraswati marrying her first cousin (I thought her uncle) who is 50ish years old and she is in her early thirties. She gets a worst match because she is a widow and people in India have no respect for widows. It really is a blessing for her to be working at Rising Star as a house mother because in India if you are a widow you have to have your head shaved so that everyone knows and you are basically cast out from society. It is traditional at the funeral when they burn the widows husbands bodies for the widows to jump on the fire and kill themselves so they don’t live without their husband. It’s a type of respect thing. In my opinion it’s a LUDACRIS thing. The other house mother I met was 18 and had never met the guy and was not allowed to meet him until her wedding. She had never even seen a picture of him and she was SO nervous! I feel so horrible for these girls ☹
So on Saturday we went to a place called Mamalapurum. Totally spelled that wrong I’m sure. In Mamamlapurum there is a bunch of little shacks that are shops and they have temple ruins and this GINORMOUS rock called the butterball! They tried to have the butterball removed a long time ago with a bunch of elephants but the rock would not budge. I went to take a picture with the butterball and almost rolled down the hill it was on in front of everyone. I’m graceful what can I say? There were so many beggers and so many kids selling things and when I say kids I mean starting at probably the age of three. When the adults and kids come selling things they are RELENTLESS!!!! No matter how many times you say no they still ask you a million times and will follow you everywhere you go and wait by shops for you. I felt so bad for one of the girl volunteers who was soooo sweet hahah like 20 people were following her and she’d just be like oh um, oh wow that is so pretty! She could not say no!! The people selling would make her hold the things they were selling so she would hold it to “look” at it and then they would say okay now you pay me 1,000 rupees hahaha. I usually say no thank you once and then just stop answering them after that. I feel so mean but usually if you ignore them they will stop. In the shops I hate bargaining also and telling them I won’t pay for stuff unless they go to the price I want because they always say you are a rich American, I have no money, no food, no home and you have all, you have money. I feel HORRIBLE when they say this!!!

Today we went to church three hours away in Chennai. I LOVE going to church in India!!! It was SO awesome and the power was out for more then half the time so it was pitch black hahah it was pretty sweet! The church is under ground. When the power went out you could hear all the nursery kids sprinting and screaming to their mommies and it was probably the cutest thing ever! Other than the primary kids singing in sacrament. Oh my goodness. I am the biggest sucker for little kids. Even though it was scorching hot in the building, pitch black and there were mosquitoes and bugs everywhere, you could still feel the spirit so strong! All the Indian people there are converts and they are unbelievable. Their faith and hope is seriously incredible. They live in shacks have no support from extended family for being Mormon, have small jobs like sweeping the streets, don’t always have food for themselves or their families or a place to live but still they keep stressing how blessed they are. When they talk about how blessed they are they say it with tears in their eyes and a real smile on their face. If you were in their situation or are in their situation would or do you consider yourself blessed? I am no genius when it comes to things about church, but while I’ve been here I’ve been thinking about something a lot. Maybe some of you reading this can relate. Sorry I am not to good at explaining myself but I’m going to try my best to explain how I feel so that you guys can understand! So I’ve been thinking about how sometimes in America when things are going very well for us at work or in sports or whatever it may be, we can begin to become vain and think that we are so wise and that because things are going so well is because of our own doing and that at the time when things are good for us we do not need god’s helping hands. But I have noticed when things are not going well or we are having hard times that God is more times then not, the first person we go to. But I feel like people who have literally nothing but the shirt on their back and some family, if that, have all the faith in the world and gratitude for God. Why in India and places like India can they have nothing, but then have so much faith and be so grateful for all the blessings they have that aren’t so apparent, but in America where we are blessed with every opportunity imaginable and incredible freedoms we have little faith sometimes and aren’t as humble or grateful but yet it is so apparent how blessed we are and how God uses his helping hands in our lives and just in America in general. Why is that? I think in America we are given the opportunities to be able to have all the material things in life we want so sometimes we lose sight of and forget so much of what makes life worth living. In America I think that most of our happiness is determined by interest rates and stocks and just money and numbers in general. But we should not be letting numbers determine our happiness. If we stop and remember what’s important in life and what we are on earth for I think we’ll all find a new happiness burning inside of us! Wow that sounded so corny…but it’s true! I don’t know if ANY of that made sense hahah but it’s just something I’ve been thinking about a lot. WE CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY!!!