Rising Star Day 4

Happy Thursday!! 

Today was awesome. Probably the best day I've had thus far. 

We had a field trip where we went to a theme park that's connected to a beach. The theme park was like a ghetto Disney World/Universal Studios. It was called "Universal Kingdom" and there was like some ghetto knock off Disney stuff. But it was safe (I think...) and the kids had a lot of fun so that's all that mattered. 

We took a bus 2.5 hours each way and that was the low point of the day. I was of course wearing my hair in a bun and so the kids behind me would keep saying "Auntie, please move!" Because my bun was blocking their view of the movie (a very weird Bollywood movie). So being the nice auntie that I am, would scoot down resulting in some uncomfortable positions. 

We got there and my group consisted of 5 girls. I mostly sorta kinda know their names. But it was an awesome bonding experience because the groups were big groups, split up even smaller and divided with all the adults in the group. So we got to hang out with the teachers at Rising Star too and I'm so glad we did. They are all soooo nice. And it was awesome to see them having so much fun! I don't know if the teachers were more excited or if the kids were. One thing that I keep realizing over and over is how similar this culture is to Americas. Of course that are plenty of differences, but the people are so similar! Though the culture has a ton of respect the people are all so fun and their humor is the same!! 

I was so impressed with the kids because they were so well behaved at the park. I was expecting crazy insane-ness from my experiences at the daycare but the kids were great. Lots of fun. And I'm slowly getting connections with some of the kids which has taken me longer than some of the other volunteers, but I don't care as long as I make a good connection with at least one kid. Today I definitely got to know the girls in my group better but there was also this girl named Jianthya, and her English amazed me. She was eight years old and we were having some awesome conversations! More than I've ever had with any American eight year old. 

So we rode some rides, took tons of pictures, drank some mango juice, ate rice with our hands (guys, it's hard), and had a lot of fun. Also the beach part was SO PRETTY. Maybe the prettiest beach I've seen. I don't know...it was really plain. Maybe it was the kids that made it beautiful (cheesy, I know). 

One funny thing that happened is that after lunch my hands were nasty so I went to wash them and this little girl said "come, come" and took me by the hand to the washing place and like cleaned my hands for me...
Maybe it sounds weird but it was so cute. It seemed a little bit like paying it forward because that's what we'll be doing to her parents who have leprosy...Kind of cool.

Another cool thing that Kirsten brought up to me is that the fact that these kids were even able to go to a theme park is a big deal. If they weren't at Rising Star and we weren't there, they would never get the chance to even go to a theme park or the beach. Something that is pretty simple, and something that most American kids do pretty often, but it brought them so much joy!