Chillin' in Khera Khurd, Delhi.

So it's now Wednesday here in Delhi, so just about a week since I've left Vancouver. These past 6 days have been some of the most intense experiences I've ever gone through in my whole, short life. But, I have to say that they are invaluable in their worth. I'm growing fast as a person, and I'm going to return home with a renewed sense of spirit and appreciation for everything and everyone around me. To me, it seems impossible to live here more than a few weeks, but there are people here like the children we work with who live their whole lives here in these unsanitary conditions. But, I suppose experience is relative, and if they've known nothing else, their coping is going to be different than my own for sure.

On Sunday, we left the Paharganj and were taken to the house in an area of Delhi called Khera Khurd where we are staying with the homestay family. I've never encountered more welcoming, kind, compassionate people. The boys are really fun and easy to get along with and the daughter is incredibly helpful, and also the one who makes all of our meals. The mom is always smiling and the dad very kind.

I fell quite ill yesterday. I'd heard about the Delhi Belly many times before and was aware that it was quite likely I'd experience it, but let me tell you, that was nothing like any sort of diarrhea I've ever experienced. The only thing leaving my body from all ends was water. I wasn't retaining any liquids whatsoever, and I began growing highly concerned that I would dehydrate. Somehow, I managed to get myself downstairs and communicate enough with the mother Krishna that I needed sugar and salt and water (pani). I told her: "Mereko pani chaiyeh" (or however you spell it, which means "I want water")... and right after she understood and helped me to get it, I basically threw up everywhere. It was a mess.

Other than this business, we have worked our first day with the kids. Their spirit is incredible, their energies so high. The room in which we are working with them is tiny, hardly the size of Meghan's bedroom back at home, most certainly smaller. And there are about 15-20 kids. None of them speak English and neither does the one worker there who helps us to shout at the kids to get them to sit down when we need them to. Being here to spend time with them and teach them as much as I possibly can is all I really want to do right now. It's the reason I am here now.

India, as a world that is so vastly different than the one I am used to, where every sensory experience is something outstandingly new and affronting, is also a world that contains little reminders here and there of my home that must not be so far away. On the bus to work in the slums the other day, someone's phone was playing JAI HO (the Pussycat Dolls remix), and Lisa and I both just started to laugh. To hear that song in the scorching heat on a crowded, rickety bus in the middle of boontown India was amusing. And here also, where it feels like the middle of nowhere, with nothing familiar, the one familiar thing that I can see is Head and Shoulders in every shop. Quite the convenient product, I must avow.