Friday July 3rd - Sun July 5th

            The night before we left City of Child we were showered with kindness and warm good byes from the staff and children. They gathered us in the kitchen and from there we were welcomed one by one to receive our flower chains individually from the boys. We then took turns saying our thank you’s and final words to the amazing people at City of Child.

 It was an extremely emotional ceremony. Many of us had made connections and relationships with multiple boys from City of Child and it was a frightening idea to leave those behind. The thought that scared me the most was that the friends I had made would forget me or that they would think I had forgotten them, even though we promised many times to one another that we would never forget each other. I found it difficult to enjoy Pune when all I could think of was the time we could be spending with the friends that we had made. I and many other students agreed that City of Child had made us amazingly happy and worry free. We spent a lot of time as a group reflecting on our experience there and how to move forward when we go back to the United States and our homes. Overall leaving City of Child was extremely difficult and almost scary.  Many of the students on the trip and myself included are already planning a way to come back like we promised many of the boys we would.

            During our time here at Pune we walked around, saw        , and visited       to learn more about Ghandi. We also bought bengals to match our sahris and boys bought traditional Indian pants to where to the Deep Griha Celebration. It was Deep Griha’s 40^th anniversary and they were eager for us to spend this milestone with them. We were also lucky to be able to watch the boys perform and say a quick hello and good-bye before going back to the hotel to get ready for tomorrow’s trip to Mumbai.

            It was difficult to go from the peaceful village of Kasurdi to the chaotic city of Pune. They are so drastically different that its hard to imagine they are only 40 kilometers away from one another. In Pune there are no traffic rules. Floods of morotcycles constantly ride fearlessly down the streets. Trash covers the city and it is heart wrenching for us to walk past child beggars and families sleeping on side of the road. Just today I saw an enfant sleeping unattended on a single layer of newspaper on the sidewalk. There is a faint stench of sewage and rubbish that lingers over the city. Pune is so drastically different from any city you would see in the U.S. and even more different from what we had become accustomed to in Kasurdi. 

Composed by Sara Collins

PS: We depart early tomorrow for Mumbai, our final stop before departing. We hope to get a jump on the city traffic and be there before lunch.