Happy Bangla Birthday!

“Kelsey, we’re celebrating your birthday right now.” It is the evening before my birthday and Lisa drags me to the front of “chapel”(the evening worship with the kids) in a headlock. I KNEW she’d been acting suspicious the past few days! But what exactly had she done? My mind races and the excitement builds as she begins talking to the kids. I am so lucky to share my birthday here with quite possibly the cutest little boy EVER! Jacob will just melt you with his smile, and he was called to the front with me. They begin singing “Happy Birthday” to us and Jacob is just beaming beside me with a huge smile on his cute little face. Then Lisa passes out a candy and banana cookies she had made to ALL the kids and caregivers-she must have made at least 140 cookies in her lunch break that day! It is QUITE a tasty treat for them. Then she again disappears, but the kids want to hear a special story for the celebration. I tell them how birthdays are celebrated in other countries. They didn’t like the idea of birthday spankings, but they loved the Ecuadorian tradition of smashing birthday girl’s face into the birthday cake! Something about being able to smear frosting all over everyone was appealing to them J After the story I was called up to the balcony(still in sight of the kids) for another surprise! A few of the staff(mainly Banni and Lisa I believe) had put up a banner and very carefully decorated a table with a cake and candle on it. Following more songs and laughter it was time to cut the cake. The 1^st slice I placed on the napkin Lisa was holding so close to my face was just too tempting for her—I soon had cake all over my face and everyone trying to dodge me as I made sure they got to experience some cake on the face as well! Lisa hadn’t heard me telling the story of that tradition to the kids just minutes earlier, but I later found out the kids were watching as Lisa so perfectly brought the story to life for them! When I felt I had shared enough frosting love they passed out the slices of delicious Funfetti cake with chocolate frosting MMMMMMMM! It was soooooooo good. They even had Bengali ice cream to go with it! The mango was my favorite J Festivities continued with much laughter, good times, and even a game of badminton. I was thoroughly enjoying myself and it wasn’t even my birthday yet!

Birthday morning I awoke to a table of packages-another one of Lisa’s wonderful surprises! Lisa and Banni got me Doreos and Nucilla—Bengali version of Oreos and Nutella. Of course we put them together and tried them right away--SOOOO TASTY! Needless to say, with such a scrumptious chocolatey start to the day it was truly one of the best days I’ve had here yet! It was absolutely packed with so many awesome experiences like my mom getting to meet my 7 yr. old mom on skype, a bunch of cute little balls of energy singing at my door, and even helping a few people experience their 1^st ride on a bike...but this blog is already way too ridiculously long to tell everything! The “little gifts”(but really huge gifts of love) from staff and kids alike throughout the day were such inspiring reminders of how much we have to give, even when we have nothing—love is the greatest gift of all!

Before coming here I’d dreamed of being able to give that gift of love to a child that didn’t have much hope, even of survival. I dreamed of rescuing a child and bringing it to the orphanage where it could be well cared for and grow up knowing that God and all the wonderful people working here loved them. We’d heard of a baby boy we may get to rescue….could my dream come true already?! On my birthday, Mrs. Waid took us to the boy’s village to bring him back to the orphanage, but that’s another story for another blog. It just made my birthday that much more unforgettable. A perfectly splendid day ended in star gazing with my “adopted” twin sisters J

Grammy's Here!

“Grammy’s coming! Grammy’s coming! Grammy’s coming! GRAMMY’S COMING!” Everyone’s faces have been beaming with these words for the past week as the anticipation is almost too much for them to handle. It is clear from the sparkle in their eyes and the excitement in their voice when they talk about “Grammy and Grandpa” that the Waids are dearly loved here. And it’s contagious—I find myself just as excited for my new grandparents to arrive, even though I’ve never even met them! The past few days have been filled with preparations of not only cleaning the entire compound but lining the sidewalks with brightly colored flags and constructing a bamboo arch near the gate and covering it in balloons(that say Happy Birthday, hehe).

Today was probably one of the most exciting days of their entire year. The Waids are not only the kids’ beloved grandparents but also “Mommy” and “Daddy” to many of the staff that now work here. AND THEY WERE COMING HOME! In honor of the occasion school was cancelled for the afternoon. At the ring of the bell children come running to line up at the gate. We are hardly able to stand still in eager anticipation of Grammy and Grandpa’s arrival. With eyes sparkling and smiles beaming the van bringing the Waids is finally spotted and drives in, letting out some of the most loving people I’ve ever met (well I hadn’t met them yet). Immediately being smothered with hugs and kisses from staff and kids alike, the Waids greet every single kid, each interaction making it more and more clear to me why Grammy and Grandpa are loved so much. But the welcome ceremony has just begun. After many a hug and kiss and even a few tears of joy, the Waids are ushered to some chairs where their feet are washed. Then a group of girls dressed as beautiful angels perform a dance as huge paper leis are tenderly placed around the honored grandparents’ necks. They are finally ushered through the bamboo arch of birthday balloons and along the colorful sidewalk up to their house where the ceremony ends. Then I got to meet Grammy for the 1^st time! I was so excited, they felt like my own grandparents I hadn’t seen in a long time! In talking to them a little more over dinner I am even more amazed at the love they have for all their “kids” here. Grandpa even said “they would go crazy without being able to come and live here with their kids.”

It is exciting, relieving and refreshing to have their presence on the compound. Tonight, the lightning illuminating the sky through cool rain with the powerful booming thunder in the background was like God’s reminder of what a powerful yet refreshing light was brought to this campus today. The sign hung with love on the Waids door says is perfectly: “Welcome Home Grammy and Grandpa.” 

My Prayer Tonight

Tonight I pray that love be communicated. That these kids could realize how much we love them, even when we make them obey. That when we follow through and they don’t get their own way they could still know that we love them. I pray that our love for these kids could grow everyday, and for the strength to love them unconditionally. It seems so backwards that the biggest recipient of our love also be our biggest frustration. We are so thankful for the love we have received, we long for our love to be received in return. I pray that our families would know how much we love them too, even when we aren’t able to communicate. Most of all I pray for the wisdom and the patience to love as You do.

From Dream to Reality

Since I left my house on September 21, I have been living in quite a blissful dream. Sure there have been culture shocks, hot nights with little sleep, and times I’ve wondered how I was going to do this when it had only been ONE WEEK. But it was all ok. I had fun with the kids, I loved their smiles, they made me laugh, it was so easy to love them, I felt I was exactly where God wanted me, and every day was a good day. This was the dream I was living in.

I still love these kids, we still have fun and laugh together everyday, I still feel this is exactly where God wants me to be. But I am no longer living in a dream. I have awoken to my reality here. Maybe it was the discovery of how challenging it is to control a Nursery class when the teacher leaves the room and all you can tell them in their language is “no” and “sit down”? Maybe it was the kid in class who was crying because I didn’t call on him when he wanted to be called on. Maybe it’s subconscious culture shock. Maybe it’s just a big reality check. Maybe it’s the overwhelming realization of what I’ve gotten myself into. Whatever it is, I am really here now, actually doing “this”. I don’t know what “this” will become in the next 6 months, but I know God will be doing “this” with me.

I’m discovering how hard patience can be when you feel you’re running low. How difficult forgiving and forgetting can get for the same kid over and over again. How wrong it feels to have to “put on” the loving face when other feelings won’t let the real love underneath come out. But despite it all I’m glad I am awake now. I like dreaming, but even better than dreaming is living out your dreams. And what good is a dream if it never becomes reality?

Perfect Day

10/10/10. Tens all around today, so naturally it was perfect for a lot of things…

Perfect day for a girl to pee on MY pants

Perfect day for me to continue to wear them all day for fear of another occurrence (we only have 2 outfits so far and I need my other pants for tomorrow)

Perfect day to make masks with the kids in art

Perfect day to teach my Kinders an Old McDonald remix with the vowels (Old McDonald had some vowels a,e,i,o,u…)

Perfect day to go through the alphabet backwards with the Nursery kids

Perfect day to play steal the bacon with the kids

Perfect day to eat dinner with my fingers

Perfect day to hoky-poky

Perfect day to make baby Gracie laugh

Perfect day to kiss all our kids goodnight

Perfect day to practice the patience of love

Perfect day to say, “ami tomake bhalobashi” (I love you)

Perfect day to thank God for bringing me right here, right now. 

Just 1 week, but...

It blows my mind to begin to realize how much one can learn and change in just one week. And at the same time how much doesn’t change. Sabbath afternoon we went to do a program in the village nearby and the Bengali ladies were staring, talking, touching me, pinching my arms-Woah! It’s white skin!-haha Yes! I’m still white! I don’t think that’ll ever change!

I’m thinking this is the most hot and humid combo I’ve lived in, but I thought by the end of one week I was beginning to get used to sweating so much all the time. Well, apparently I’m not adapted well enough yet because last night the weather stole quite a bit of my sleep. One of our hottest days here turned into our most miserable night yet. We lay on our sheets, sweating. Despite our two fans going, our room on the 4^th floor is even more warm and stuffy than usual. Sleep is definitely not coming, so Lisa turns on our lifesaving A.C. for a few mins (it cools the room….pretty well, but it uses precious electricity so we try to use it only for about ½ hr. each night). Somehow we manage to begin a cycle of tossing and turning finding a new slightly cooler position every few mins, occasionally turning on the precious A.C. for a few mins for lack of other options to get any sleep! We were later able to borrow a temp/humidity gauge and found the misery index (temp and humidity combined calculation of what it actually feels like) reaching 118 in our room! No wonder we had trouble sleeping J

My first week here has been filled with many other things too. We’ve been learning the language since our 1^st day here with our 1^st phrase we learned and practiced with the kids “Tumi kaman hacho?”(“how are you?). I have now learned a handful of other phrases, animals, names, and even how to count to 23! Lucky me even got to speak for vespers our 1^st week here! I also got to play badminton for the 1^st time ever in the court they set up here! It was fun, but I do need some practice—Banni (one of our friends here) has agreed to teach me if I teach her piano J

I have also learned that not only do geckos crawl on your wall, they squeak! And frogs….they can jump a looooooong ways. Thanks to Lisa I have learned to stay even farther away from frogs when she is on the other side of themJ

But, we now have super comfortable, thin Bengali clothes that I love! So life is good J

Shopping and Dancing

Super Sunday! Hehe J The exchange rate here is amazing(currently 69 Taka=$1). So now that we have Taka instead of U.S. $ we feel quite rich J We travelled to the nearest town, Hele in a “motor van”.(pic above) Now I have no idea where that got that name because neither is it a van nor does it have any kind of motor. Their “motor van” consists of a bike with a wagon type of back on it designed for maybe 4 Bengali people? Well, our poor biker guy was pulling 900+ pounds on his bike with 6 of us in his “van” (4 of us being Americans-a.k.a. bigger). Needless to say he was quite relieved when we found another “van” to split the weight with!

            Lisa and I were so stoked to go shopping! We finally decided on 4 Saleur Kameis outfits, got measured, and left them to be sewed! Roughly $5 for the fabric of each and about $1.50 for the labor of sewing it all—bargains! On our return voyage we rode in a different type of van that actually had a roof and may have been battery powered. We were fortunate enough to encounter our first traffic jam in this, big trucks trying to pass each other completely blocked the whole road for awhile. While we were waiting something hit the roof and we freaked a little cuz people throw things at you when they’re angry at you, and we had no idea why anyone would be angry at us-we were waiting in the same traffic jam they were! Then we noticed a fruit on the ground beside us and realized it had just dropped from the tree above us! Hahahahaha we all had a good laugh!

            We returned to the orphanage to begin, once again, preparing for our major embarrassment. The staff began dressing us up, doing our hair, make-up, put the red dot on the forehead, and even painted our hands and feet with this red paint they use just for dancing(pic with one of our twin friends here). After they had us all decked out they sat us down for the cutest program I’ve ever seen kids do! They welcomed us with confetti, dances and dramas that though we didn’t fully understand were funny nonetheless and everyone was laughing! My favorite was a group of kids that acted out the 10 little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head…. J Then came time for our embarrassment. In front of EVERYONE at the orphanage, all decked out in our Bangla dance attire…..yes. they made us dance(embarrassing dancing pic). We tried our best to follow this dance they had shown us the night before but they just laughed and laughed and laughed! It was fun, but goodness IT WAS EMBARRASSING! Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish! It seems that every mission experience has one of those unforgettably embarrassing moments, so we’ve had ours, we might be safe now J

            To finish our Super Sunday of Super shopping and Super embarrassment we had some super good curry the cook Shati made for dinner! It is the BEST curry I have EVER had! Oh my word. If we successfully learn how to make it, I will have to share this heavenly goodness with you all because man are you missing out! I don’t think I’ll even mind eating all the rice with that kind of curry mmmmmmmmmJ

Shubo Shabat!

Happy Sabbath! The other American missionary and a local here were very patient dressing us in their sarais, which is quite a complicated process. Then we went to church and messed them all up with kids pulling on them and sleeping on our laps J Oh, and did I mention Lisa and I had our first story-telling opportunity in Sabbath school? We are sitting there with the kids and they ask us to tell a story, so we start telling the Joseph story. All is going well until we tell the kids Joseph’s brothers found his cup in their sack and took it back to Joseph saying “Here, we didn’t take this but we found it in our bag and it’s not ours”…..not the soldiers came after them and searched their bags for it. Woops! Um….the missionaries may need to brush up on their bible stories J I have a feeling we will have plenty of opportunities to redeem ourselvesJ

            It was raining again after church, so lisa and I and 3 other local girls went up on the roof and hung out in the rain! That is, until this peel of thunder exploded and sent us screaming downstairs. The storms here are pretty exciting! A few of the staff here that know Enlgish were patient enough to teach us a few words on the balcony tonight, until we began what I’m pretty sure will become our first major embarrassment here. More to come when it happens J

Home Sweet Home

I’m finally home. After a night in Dhaka and a crazy 6 hour drive(seems to me drivers seem to prefer driving down the middle of the road playing chicken with oncoming traffic), we are at Bangla Hope Trust Orphanage. We arrived during quiet time, but after their naps we got to meet them and I love them so much! Though some are more shy than others, you can still see the desperate need to be loved in their eyes. And there are plenty that become attached within seconds! We got to practice our 1^st Bengali phrase with the kids “tumi kamon hacho?” which means “how are you?” AND I got to hold my first baby, Gracie, today!! J Names are going to be a challenge, but I love the Bengali food! We had an amazing breakfast this morning! Surprisingly I loved it even though it was rice! We had Dahl with chili and the spice was so scrumptious.

            Back to the final stages of our journey here, it took us awhile to get through customs because we didn’t have our address here in Bangladesh with us…woops! The police enjoyed trying to communicate with us though until Lisa saved the day spotting someone holding a Bangla Hope sign on the other side of the glass. They let her go with an escort and get the address from him before they finally let us through! Meanwhile, we got our luggage brought to us because we took so long, so actually worked out better for us! The orphanage is nestled down this cute pathway through a few little villages, out in the middle of some rice fields. To our surprise there were 2 other Americans at the orphanage! A missionary couple from India is staying here for a few weeks because of visa rules, and we’ve learned a lot of helpful things about the culture from them. Take off your shoes when you go in certain rooms, don’t eat with your left hand, people hold hands just as a sign of friendship, and if you finish all the food you’ll get even more for the next meal!

            As we arrived on a Friday, we went to vespers before sleeping in our new house for 6 months.(pic is where all the kids sleep, kitchen, laundry room...) Tomorrow we get to experience our first Sabbath and full day at the orphanage J

Little Realizations

Things couldn’t have worked out better. So many things have just fallen in place, convincing me more and more this is really what I should be doing. Up until we were in the airplane I honestly could not believe I was really doing this. After a 15 min. drive in the plane down the runway, we finally took off from LAX and realizing there was no going back now! 14 hours went by surprisingly fast with the sweet entertainment system on our Chinese flight! Music, games, live outside camera, movies and more we could use at our convenience-it was LEGIT! Watching Letters to Juliet got me thinking about love, something I will be thinking about a lot at the orphanage. I saw my first lightning storm from a plane and it was truly…striking J After a few banana cakes for breakfast we landed in Hong Kong to another realization—we’re half-way around the world! In our 14 hour layover we decided to visit Lantau island, Hong Kong’s largest island which holds the world’s tallest, outdoor, seated bronze Buddha(pic above) located in Ngong Ping village. Getting in at 5:50 a.m. we had to wander until things opened and found a huge grocery store with an entire wall of oil! Hmm…I wonder what they use a lot of in their cooking here J We planned to take a tour to this Buddha from the airport as neither of us are experienced in travelling in countries where you don’t know ANY of their language and…we didn’t really know where we were going. However, we were skilled enough to not be able to find the tour, so ended up just taking a bus to and from the gondola, saving about $15 each, yes! Now I love gondolas. But this gondola ride was especially awesome. It was about 25 min. each way up this lush humid hill to the Giant Buddha, and they even had gondolas with glass bottoms! Also by the Buddha is the Po Lin Monastery where we found people burning incense, worshipping, and a monk chanting and bonging a bell (I wish I knew what it all meant). We noticed these red blow-up bunnies with wings on them hanging all over the village up there(pic above) so we finally asked what they were for. The vague idea we got was they were for a festival on September 22 celebrating this man and woman getting back together. For some reason this couple is not allowed to make love so the God upstairs had to separate them and they can only see each other this one day each year. As for the bunny, we were told it just stays with the woman on the moon all year protecting her? There must be more to the story.

            On our trip down the mountain back to the airport we were reminded of God’s perfect timing once again. We had gotten such an early start we had a gondola all to ourselves just the two of us. When we got to the bottom they were packing the gondolas with 10+people and there was a huuuuuuge line waiting to get on! (we had just walked on). On the bus back to the airport it started raining—if we had been sweating up those steps to Buddha just a few minutes later we would have been drenched!

            I’m hoping Hong Kong airport sink water is safe to drink because I guess they don’t believe in drinking fountains there and I was feeling too cheap to buy the bottled water J We’re back at the waiting game in the airport, excited for the next leg of our journey but still nervous for what’s to come!

Fun fact: Wednesday this week was only 9 hours long for us

Realization: We will be travelling from Tuesday p.m. till Friday a.m. in Bangladesh without a shower. Maybe our smell will help keep away the curious American-lookers J