Plus 2



The time has finally come; our volunteers are here! Well, not all of them. But two of our volunteers arrived in the last week, and it was time to put all of our preparation to the test! One of these volunteers is Braxton's brother, Jaret, and the other is a girl named Kaile. Here is our first week of volunteer presence summed up in a few key instances:

So far, we have had...
1 missed connecting flight, 

1 hour of panic while we didn't know where a volunteer was and she could have been anywhere in the world, 

4 very long car rides to and from the airport,

Several MASSIVE rainstorms that leave cool (temperature-wise and looks-wise) clouds like this,

1 INSTALLED AC UNIT!!!

2 entire shelves of delicious American cereals and snacks, delivered kindly by Jaret from Mom,

3 out of 4 nasty bathrooms deep cleaned, 

1 out of 4 toilets working consistently,

Many hours spent on our amazing deck,

1 plant purchased to beautify our deck,

Countless plates of incredible chicken biryani (go to the nearest Indian restaurant and eat it because it might be the most delicious thing to have ever been created),

1 successfully taught pre/post-natal nutrition class with 26 pregnant or nursing women in attendance!!! 
1 extremely ill woman with blind husband fall into our arms with tears in her eyes, thanking us for beginning to build her a soilet,

1 complete stranger giving us mangoes because we were lost then helping us find our way, 

1 thousand random strangers asking us to take selfies, 
These are but three of the hundreds of stranger selfies...
1 million people running into us while we tried to navigate a market near the largest mosque in India during the final week of Ramadan, and forgetting that you're supposed to walk/drive on the left side of the sidewalk/road and realizing you are just swimming upstream and fighting a losing battle,

1 successfully tied saree (yes I did it myself!)
(Actually this is not the saree I tied by myself... Someone tied this one for me and then I practice on a different one that is not picture because it didn't look as nice heh)
1 in every 3 people thinking Braxton is actually from Northern India when he wears his kurtas,

1 garden almost planted, but then it started pouring rain (we will be going back to plant it tomorrow),

4 hours spent driving through the beautiful Indian countryside to visit a village that is the hometown of one of our partners and start some projects at two very underfunded government schools there (see below),


50 (give or take, may be an exaggeration) glasses of mango juice given to us by extremely kind guests and partners anytime we set foot anywhere and meet new people,

4 new soilets started! 
Me watching Braxton and Jaret do the heavy lifting... Just kidding I actually hopped in the pit myself later:)
2 bloody hands because of the pit digging,

3 extremely huge cockroach/beetle/monsters that are as big as Braxton's hand found on the road outside...

30 school children, that cannot even afford shoes, received books and school supplies from one of our partners and we were invited to help distribute them #HELPintl


Too many kurtas and sarees bought (by me) (but we are required to wear Indian clothes for all of our meetings and projects, so I needed a wardrobe upgrade Indian style)
Please disregard the creepy guy in the back and admire my friend Vanilla that took us shopping... 

and finally...

2 incredibly yet unintentionally impactful quotes, one from one of our volunteers and the other from a very old man who runs a orphanage for boys (that we will be working with this summer):









"The first thing that hit me when I walked into that slum today was not that these people were poor, but that they were so extremely happy." - Kaile







"Healing the heart lasts for a long stretch." -Kumar

And now, please enjoy a million more pictures of our adventures so far! 



Posing in front of some murals past HELP teams have painted on pre-school walls :)



















Saving the best for the rear end of the blog post ;)

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