Tuesday 7 February 2012

Home from our Jan 2012 trip to India




Last week we arrived home from our latest visit with Sunama and the children. We stayed in Chennai for 10 days, spending each day with the family.

It was wonderful to see how the five children have grown. Fareeda is now 14 and Zeenath has just turned 5 years old. Zeenath is as cheeky a character as Jaan Basha was on our first visit!


All of the children are now speaking well in English as well as their native Tamil, as their school teaches the students in English. This put communication on a whole new level, as we could chat without having to work our way through charades and guesses.

The children are all well, happy and we were told that they are good students. Fareeda is now in high school and hopes one day to be able to further her education in Australia. We told her to continue as a conscientious student and we would be happy to support her future goals.



We had a one-day trip to Pondicherry as the children were on a school break for the Pongal festival. Everyone (except me and the driver ... and at times I wasn't so sure about the driver's state of alterness!) fell asleep in cute clumps of people on the way there.





We then enjoyed celebrating Pongal (the harvest festival) with the other children at The Ashram. The day after Pongal, it was great to see all the local cows decorated to join in the celebration, with painted horns and bells tied to their horn tips.

We then bid a sad farewell to everyone, but with promises of letters and photos to follow.