Oh My Goodness
Saturday, January 05, 2013
The most recent picture that I have of Karma (right) with her friend Parbati. (Photo by Ben Heiber!)
Karma turned 15 today and Pankha turned 12. We have lots of January birthdays in this house. We had a really nice little celebration. The kids each took turns singing songs, and of course ate lots of MoMos! I took Karma and Goma and Rupa out to dinner, just the three of us on Thursday. We realized that if I was Karma's biological mother, I would have had her when I was 11 and then we talked about what I was doing when I was 11 and how crazy it is how we all ended up together. We also talked about sports. Karma is my girl, who doesn't take part much in sports and family games. Most of the Kopila kids have inherited my love for intense competition but Karma, she's just as happy writing in her notebook, and sitting up on the roof listening to music. She is a beautifully wise soul. A few weeks ago the girls all read about how the Obama daughters, each have to play two sports, one that they get to choose and one that their parents choose. We were sitting in my room huddled around the heater and the girls all asked me what I would choose for them and giggled every time I told them my choice and why. (Gymnastics, horse back riding, karate, volleyball, wrestling) For whatever reason they thought it was fascinating knowing what I would pick for them. Karma told me she wants to try playing volleyball, which made me happy. Then she told me about how she thinks she wants to be a singer so she's trying to stay away from sweets and cold foods and drinks to keep her voice strong, just like our music teacher suggested. She and Sagar sang a duet tonight that absolutely melted my heart.
We have had too many big exciting things going on to even stop and breathe, let alone write about, but here goes. Our friends Brittany and Brianne were here from our partner's at She's the First. They shot some amazing footage of our school and interviews with our girls. I can't wait to see what they put together! They also conducted video workshops with our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders and had the kids make their first documentaries on topics of their choosing. We all gathered in the computer lab and watched the videos once they were edited and put together. It was sooo amazing to watch the kids' watch their movies. They were giggling and laughing and blushing. They reminded me of ME whenever I watch myself on film... "Do I really sound like that?" It was so much fun and I was so proud of their first ever videos. Hats off to them. I think the kids should take over the blog a little and start doing some of their own stuff. Thank you She's the First for coming all the way out here and for being the most amazing partners', friends, and supporters for girls' education. We love you and loved having Brittany and Brianne for the holidays. (Check out the She's the First blog for some amazing posts about the She's the First visit to Kopila and more videos the kids made!)
Then Rahul came to visit from Movement for Peace and we got to work assembling and distributing dozens of sawyer water filters. You might remember when we did this last year with Cara of Mia Amicas Globally. We are firm believers and advocates for Sawyer and are doing everything we can to partner and get clean drinking water to other schools, hospitals, and people in our city. Rahul also helped with distributing de-parasiting medication (it's that time of the year again) and vitamin A, for every single one of our students and stocked our entire school up with toothbrushes and toothpaste for the kids.
We do not wait around over here and have been busy putting all your generous WISHLIST contributions to good use! (I will be updating the wishlist shortly.) In the last couple months, we've stocked up on medicines, gotten more books for our library, had our carpenters make some much needed furniture, installed additional water taps, and tanks, and built a additional few toilet stalls and bathing area. We also put up a volleyball and badminton court, and added to our collection of musical instruments which came in handy for all the sports competitions and annual day celebration. We really like to keep things shaking. Thanks so much for allowing us to accomplish all this.
We have Dr. Frank is here visiting again!!! Let's all take a moment and breathe a sigh of relief to have a doctor in the house. My anxiety levels have dropped by about 45%. We've got so many exciting medical initiatives planned over the next couple months. Dr. Frank is doing a lecture series for our community, entirely open to the public on Saturdays. Local blog readers you are all welcome to join us! I also want to publicly welcome our newest Kopila Early Childhood Fellow, Mallory. Mallory is an incredibly gifted occupational therapist coming to us from NYC. We are so thrilled and lucky to have Mallory and Frank here. Our team, both local and international, is super solid right now and I'm excited to see all that we can accomplish together.
My next post I want to update you all on Kopila High and some other interesting construction projects we have going on in the works. "Oh my goodness!!!" That's Namraj's favorite phrase right now. I wonder where he gets it from :)
So much love to you this weekend and thanks for checking in!