"I yam... tree!"

That is 3 year old Subash's way of answering the question "How old are you?" Yesterday four of the kids - Sharadha, Bharathi, Ranjani and Subash, all 3 years old, took their entrance exam to get into a really good private international school. It is taught in English so they had to answer some basic questions that we have been trying to practice with them for the past few weeks. It took one week just to stop them from simply repeating the question back to us and another week to respond with the semi-complete answer. Subash now gives an adorable (in our eyes) pause in between "I am" and "three" since we would say only a few words at a time. Honestly, I'm sure they don't have a clue what all of it means (they're only three, after all), but I like that Ranjith and Sumathy are trying to get them into better schools instead of shoving all of them into government schools.

Ali Fischer and Becca Polk, Kate's cousin, arrived earlier this week and have jumped right in with all the kids. It is nice to have some more people around that you can just meet eyes with in the midst of all the craziness and just be able to laugh. There are fewer things that make you feel more pointless than trying to control a room full of 2 and 3 year olds that don't speak English. Chennai is in the state of Tamil Nadu and so they speak Tamil, one of the oldest languages in the world. I don't know much more than "go" "come" and "drink milk". I should be trying harder to learn more but they want us to speak English to the kids so that they can practice. It definitely would come in handy during the moments of 'baby mayhem' when we're trying to feed them (rice with our right hands of course) and half of the 19 babies (kids under three) are crying, covered in the food, and sitting in their own urine and shit. Did I mention that they don't wear diapers? We're in the habit of staring down to avoid the obstacle courses on the tiles.

Speaking of tiles, the have completed a lot of the construction on the new building, which has a decent-sized kitchen now, a dining hall large enough to seat everyone, and plans to build a new dorm on the second floor. And by construction I mean hand mixing cement and carrying it in little dishes on their heads, bending rebar with a mallet and a rock, and hand chipping tile in intricate designs for the flooring. I've never seen anything like it. We have some amazing luxuries with the hand tools and machines we use for building in the states. I have some great photos of the tilework they've done, and hopefully I'll get to an internet place that allows me to use the USB to upload them. So far now luck on that front.

FYI, the donated money has helped pay for the tile work as well as some of the new fans in the dining hall and will likely pay for those kids' first year of schooling (pending admission). We'll be letting you know what else its used for in the future. It is a huge stress reliever for Ranjith and Sumathy to be able to pay up front for some of these things, so thanks again to everyone who donated - the $3200 raised is going to go a long way here.

Hopefully more updates soon and more often, we're supposed to be getting the internet soon!

-Susan