Monday 6/29 and Tuesday 6/30

Yesterday on the 8^th day of our Indian adventure, the group was back at city of child and very tired after a long night of traveling. Although we did have a tiring night on the road, we still decided to go out and learn more about Deep Griha and help City of Child. The group decided to split up into two groups; Henry, Liesje, Dan, Ben, Tommy and Brandon stayed at City of Child and continued the trench work. We additionally, worked on a trench around the perimeter of their playground to help the irrigation of the plants around the playground. It was a long and quiet day on the grounds, working hard but in the end we felt good about leaving our mark at City of Child. On the other hand, Whittier, Olivia, Megan, Alexis, Angie, Sarah and Emily went out to the Deep Griha main office in Pune, and got to see all of their facilities and what all of their projects and goals are. At two of their offices, the group was able to go out into the communities and got to tour the slums, these tours were eye opening and very interesting to the group. After the tours of the slums and visits to the offices, the group went out and bought beautiful saree’s for the celebration we will be attending this weekend. In the end of the day, when the groups reunited at City of Child, they told each other about their tiring but exciting days in India, followed by a delicious birthday cake for Olivia!

            Today, the group went out to the local elementary school and got to play games with different groups of the students. The Millbrook students were broken up into pairs and given different groups of students from the elementary school. Within the groups we played Duck-Duck Goose, Indian Chief, Rock Paper Scissors tournament’s and many more. Although the students tended to get antsy after a few minutes of each game, we got to meet many more children and connect with them. After singing songs to the children and them singing songs to us, we donated two soccer balls and two frisbees to them for them to play with during school. The students were very appreciative of these gifts and it was nice to see how thankful they were for them. After we returned to City of Child, we painted the chapel and had a very fun and relaxing time doing so.  

By: Whittier and Henry