Unforgettable Eyes

I'm sorry I've been so MIA but we had a storm last week and our internet box was struck by lightning so we didn't have internet for almost a week! My mom has a hard time living in Africa because of the time difference. She feels that by the time she gets the scoop on what's going on in our lives it happened "so long ago", yesterday, that we brush over the juicy details and she misses out. That's how I feel right now. So much has happened in the last week I don't know if I should recap in detail or just move on. I think it's important to catch you up on what's impacting the present. We have two new volunteers from Utah, Darian (eighteen from Park City), and Hillary (twenty-one from Alpine). They are the best. We clicked instantly and have all had so much fun together. At the beginning of the week we went out in the morning to fill a trench with dirt. It has a sewage pipe in it and we thought we were making some serious progress when we filled 30 meters full of dirt. Little did we know that the trench winds around the new volunteer block and apparently it's four-hundred meters long. I've decided that this hole may have to be my burial site. You'd think that filling a hole would be a lot easier then digging one, but it's not! The dirt we're filling the whole with is very hard and quite stubborn. Not to mention the cows that were digging holes in our completed part of the trench weren't much help. You'd think that the Indian heat, tough dirt and a bunch of girl's couldn't get the job done but we are determined to dominate. I definitely worked my tan that day. Churidar tans are the new thing around here. Speaking of tans, last weekend we went to Mamallapuram beach and swam in the Bay of Bengal. It was such a blast. Between you and me, Annie and I managed to go skinny dipping. It's a goal of hers to skinny dip in every body of water she visits throughout her life. Rather then hold her back I decided to join in and make it one of my goals! It was quite an adrenaline rush when a bunch of German men approached us, but thank goodness we were decent in time! It's so nice meeting "foreigners" around here. In America you meet people from all over the world all the time but here it's unique to meet people, outside of Rising Star, that are from different countries. Earlier this week we had the water war of the century. The boys and girls have separate play times, so we first began the war with the boys. No offense but their war was quite pathetic. To call it a war is simply talking it up to more then it really was. I got hit by one balloon. Wimpy. I know. The real war began with the girl's. Our tactics needed to be different. The problem with the boys was that they were each given one balloon so they guarded their balloons with their lives. The balloon became a prized possession and once it was broken they had nothing to protect. We needed to show the girls the insignificance of the balloons and the opportunity they had to stop being so "girly" and have some fun! As the girls were all in line to get their balloons, Hillary, Annie, Darian and I filled buckets full of water and poured it all over them. The war had begun. From that moment on I don't remember a second where I wasn't dodging a balloon, covering my head from a bucket that was pouring water all over my body or running as fast as I could from twenty girl's chasing me at full speed. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. We even got the staff involved. The staff here are extremely proper and always dressed nicely for work. It was nice to see them let loose and play with the children. We even got the General Manager soaked! I'd never seen him laugh so hard. Today we went to one of my favorite colonies, Badallapuram. This is the colony that Arumagam was from. Because we have a couple of new volunteers here, it was important that they had the opportunity to wash the patient's feet so I was able to work with Dr. Kumar. One of the patient's was missing all of his toes except his big toe. His big toe was twice the size of your "normal" toe. Dr. Kumar showed me an x-ray and pointed out a couple of breaks he had throughout the course of his life. These fractures filled themselves with fluid, resulting in an extraordinarily large toe. The problem is that the toe can only grow so much before Dr. Kumar will have to amputate it. I asked if he could use a cane to prevent the pressure from being so great on his toe and Dr. Kumar told me that he doesn't want to live life with a cane. He would rather walk on his own. Initially I thought, how stubborn. I'm realizing the difference between being stubborn and simply having the desire to live life fully. He just wants to be independent. What is so hard amongst the older patients is that once they've broken a bone, they are unable to get around, alike what happened to Arumagam. This debilitates them completely. Often times leaving them at their death bed, unable to live fully. I also met a woman that has not been able to blink her eyes for forty years. Her eye lids are paralyzed and she lives life, night and day, with open eyes. I can't imagine, especially in India where the dirt is always flying around, not being able to shut your eyes. A simple thing. A thing I take for granted and I've never imagine living life without. I close my eyes during the scary part of a movie. When the sun's in my eyes. While asleep. During a sweet kiss. She has to put eye drops in her eyes every fifteen minutes to prevent her eyeballs from drying out completely. It's a miracle she's not blind from the wear and tear of life and never closing her eyes. Although it's been such a trial for her, in someways her eyes are a blessing to the world, I will never forget them. They were a gorgeous blue, unlike any I'd ever seen. The most unforgettable part was her smile. Despite her hardship, she still smiled.