India

Kat and I arrived in Calcutta on January 15th after a long flight originating in Boston. Tim Losee and Mr. Sampson (the Secretary of the Ranaghot YMCA) met us at the airport with welcoming and excited smiles. We were brought to the Calcutta YMCA, which was built in 1857. It is a very interesting building with a few floors and and indoor sporting court. The rooms were very nice as they had been recently renovated in 1996 (i believe). The view from our room was wonderful. In the morning we met with both Mr. Sircar and his wife, who both welcomed us to India and the YMCA. We then made our way by bus to Ranaghot, which is north of Calcutta. The traffic here is quite overwhelming as there is endless honking and vehicles pass so close that you could reach out and touch passengers on another bus!!! Add in all the bicyclers, rickshaws, pedestrians, cattle, and dogs and it is quite an adventure.
Anyways, we arrived at the Ranaghot YMCA to much excitement.
The girls were all waiting for us with flower lai's, tons of energy, and excited faces. They all seemed to love Tim and were very happy to meet us, although maybe a bit shy. We were shown our room which was quite nice and is in a very old building that used to house doctors. The Ranaghot Y prior to being the girl's home was a boy's home and prior to that a hospital. In fact many of the building on campus were built from the clay dug from two huge holes which are now ponds for fish.
We spent our first afternoon playing games with the girls. We played a mixture of American (Sharks and Minnows) and Indian games (Golla Churi and Gouchouri). The girls are very very fast. We then helped the girls with snack, went to prayer, and then very important study. The girls all attend three separate schools: English, Bengali, and Hindi. Cat, Tim, and I each take a room to help the girls focus on their studies. Afterwards we went to dinner, rice, eggs, dal, and potatoes (this is Tim's favorite), pretty mild since Tim is not a fan of spice. Don't worry I will definitely spice things up around here.