Let's get one thing straight,

India is dirty.
India is hot.
India is uncomfortable.
India is Beautiful.

Last night I slept on the roof of my hotel and watched an orange sky pass over me until five o'clock in the morning. This morning I woke up to a purple sunrise and a terra cotta pot of warm chai.
The last week has been exhausting and full of wonderful people and new relationships. Let me give you a small rundown of what I'm doing on a "regular" (if there is such a thing) day to day basis:
At 7'oclock every morning the volunteers all meet at the mother house for breakfast and to hear any announcements that the sisters might need to give us. We pray and sing a couple of songs and eat bananas, white bread, and chai then everyone heads out in their different directions to go to work. I normally arrive at Khalighat, the home that I am working at in the mornings, at about 8 o'clock and work until about noon. Khalighat is the first home that Mother Theresa set up in Calcutta in the 1940's, it's called the home for the destitute and dying and about 50 men and 50 women are being treated here. They are brought off of the streets for many many reasons but for a good majority they come here to have a few meals and a bed to leave this earth in. First thing in the morning I help with laundry wringing out clothes and laying laundry on the roof to dry, a daunting task on somedays to try and wash clothes and bedding for a hundred people by hand. After laundry we'll go onto the male's side, a large room with about fifty-sixty beds about a foot apart, and help distribute medication and water and basically hang out with the men while some of the more trained volunteers with a background in nursing change bandages and clean wounds. Some of which are just awfully infected and many of the patients are missing appendages. We give massages and listen, even if we can't understand, to what the men have to say and sometimes just sit beside them and hold their hands. Not everyone who is here is here to die however, many people are seen for about a week or so, given a round of antibiotics, had their wounds cleaned and the bandages cleaned, and sent back on their way purely out of a lack of resources to keep them with us longer. Our time with the men lasts about two hours and then we bring them lunch, do dishes, and head home.
In the afternoon I work at a children's home called Dayadan. A place for orphaned children with mental and physical disabilities. I work on the first floor from 3-5:30 with about 4 other volunteers playing with about 12-15 boys with an array of different disabilities. Many can't speak or walk but they are all some of the most wonderfully happy children I've ever met. We play with them for about an hour then we help feed them and then break them up into smaller groups to help teach them songs for this years christmas pageant. I'd love to tell more about the boys but the truth is, I've only been here for about a week and I'm still getting used to this routine and I'm still getting to know the boys, so there will be plenty of stories in the next few weeks I promise.
Namaste