October 18, 2009
We had a four day weekend this weekend because of the Hindu holiday Tihar. It’s the festival of lights I think, and there are “Christmas” lights up everywhere with these little lamps burning. It’s actually really pretty, though it’s sad that it’s to call on the Hindu god. But, I’m totally ok with having a 4 day weekend, as we won’t have another shortened week until December 4th (yeah, you better enjoy your Thanksgiving!). It’s back to 6 day school weeks for us :)

But, as we don’t have school these 4 days, the kids had the brilliant idea of going for a walk in the mornings. Wait, did they say walk? Oh, let me translate. That means, let’s go out at 5 am and run hard for 3-4 minutes and then walk for 3-4 and repeat 6 or 7 times. It’s actually really refreshing, though it was quite a surprise on the first day! We do that until about 5:45 when we go back home, and the kids do their duties and we have devotionals/prayer meeting. Then, Shiva looks at me like a little kid (he’s 15!) and says, “Sister, football?!” So, as the children have finished their duties, we round up the boys (the girls are widgems as Chloe would say, meaning pansies who are always “paining”) and we’re off to our little makeshift soccer field.

The mornings are quite cool, making for really enjoyable soccer weather. Most of the boys have on flip flops (several of which are broken), and they roll up their pants as high as they’ll go on their legs, making a very humorous picture! Shiva’s by far the best, but the other boys aren’t bad either. We pick teams, and start playing on the dew laden ground, dancing around earthworms and trash. It’s usually 3 on 3, and within seconds, everyone’s covered in a fine layer of dirt and mud! Today, though, I went out for awhile as I had a mixture of blood in with the dirt and mud and wanted to ensure it was “ok,”, so Prabin says, “Sister, I can use your shoes?” My feet are much bigger than his, but I happily agreed and he looked slightly like a clown as he put on the first one. Then, Rajkumar ran over and said “Sister, I get the other one!” So they split them. I’m so not kidding. It was amazing. They each had one tennis shoe and one flip flop.

I go back into the game about 10 minutes later, and tell them to keep the shoes, because they’re enjoying them so much. So now I’m playing barefoot soccer without any sort of leg protective gear beyond the layer of dirt guarding my legs, and let me tell you, it was quite the experience. I don’t think my legs have ever known that sort of pain. First off, we were playing on a mixture of dirt, rocks and weeds, leading to a general pain throughout my feet. Then, when kicking the ball without shoes on, it leads to a whole new level of pain, especially since the cold air is keeping the bones rigid. Finally, I played goalie most of the game, which was great, because all the kids except Shiva were afraid of me kicking them with the ball (I can kick the ball a lot harder than them, and once I knocked one of the little boys over with the ball!).

Well, as life would have it, Shiva charged down the field with the ball, and I figured it was in my best interest to charge him (for my Aggie soccer friends, this might sound familiar!), and he kicked the ball with his might, and it slammed into my shin bouncing away. I thought my legs had known pain before, but no, they’d never known pain! My shin and calf turned this lovely red color, visible even under the dirt! Grimacing underneath my grin, I assured them that I was fine. Arun came bounding back in his gangly way to invite me to play forward. I said absolutely not, as I wanted to do as little running as possible! We finished up our game (they won, but only by one goal!), and limped home like street dogs. As we gathered around the well to wash our legs off, we managed to scrub off all the dirt, after seeing all the fun we had obviously had (dirt tells all), the girls decided they needed in on the action. So in the evening, out we went again, me with 15 kiddos, to play soccer on a volleyball field. Oh the joys of soccer!