Every Saturday night the children watch a movie projected on
a screen set up in the dining hall. Movie night is best described as
interesting. They rotate watching Tamil movies and English movies, but it
doesn’t really matter what language the movie is in because the acoustics are
horrible and there are always at least a couple dozen kids whispering all while
the house mother’s phones ring and then they randomly call out different
children’s names so they can come talk to their parents. The standards of what
is okay to let the children watch is different too. One week we watch a movie
that was EXTREAMLY violent and showed a suicide, but then another week we
watched Frozen and the children were absolutely not allowed to watch the kiss
at the end-they made someone cover the projector lens and everything. One of
the little boys I was sitting with during Frozen leaned over to me and asked if
in America we really have little rocks that turn into trolls. He was also
really disturbed that a carrot was used for Olaf’s nose. I love movie night though.
It is just another fun way to spend time with the kids and definitley
entertaining, the entertainment just rarely comes from the actual movie being
shown—or I mean “watched”.
The Saturday night before Father’s Day they were watching
the Hobbit—ironic because Dad use to read us that book when we were little. I’m
always a tangled ball of feelings around this time of the year anyway, but this
night was particular hard for me on top of being super tiered so I got up to
leave the movie early and immediately Maria, one of the 3rd Standard
girls (who I think looks WAY younger then 3rd standard), stood up
and grabbed my hand saying “Auntie, Auntie come sit with me!” I told her I was
tiered and going to bed, so she replied “Oh yeah, I’m really tiered too. Will
you walk me back to my hostel?” I said yes, so off we went, walking to the
hostel, hand in hand of course. When we got to the hostel, I told her good
night and she started up the stairs, but then she abruptly stopped, turned
around, ran back down to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, kissed my cheek
and said “Goodnight Auntie! I love you!” and then started running back up the
stairs. I got this huge smile on my face and I’m pretty sure my heart grew
three sizes. It was EXACTLY what I needed that night, perfectly timed and
everything. I honestly feel like she was on a little errand from Aunt Anne or Dad
(maybe both?) and I was totally okay with that. They picked the perfect little
messenger.
I didn’t
have my camera on me but I ended up playing with she and her friends during
playtime the next day so I snapped a few pictures then—Maria is the one in the
yellow. They kept saying that they wanted me to take a picture of them saying
roar, but every time I went to do it they would just stand there. So it took a
few times, but we finally got it. Don’t even try to tell me you aren’t smiling
right now.
