Birthday in India

This past Saturday I celebrated my birthday not only in India, but on one of our weekend trips to the city of Madurai.

The day started out great because first of all I had slept in air-conditioning!! My students were very kind to surprise me with little notes and gifts and sang a hearty round of ‘Happy Birthday’ as I ate my cornflakes and hot milk! After I got my stuff together to go off touring for the day I was surprised to see a cake with ‘Happy Birthday Hannah Brown’ written on it (in case there was any confusion on which Hannah’s birthday it was!)!

Then we started off on our full day of touring by first going to Meenakshi temple. As we were walking around the huge temple we came across an elephant standing in the courtyard. For a small fee you could have the elephant ‘bless’ you and put his trunk on you. I was so surprised by how heavy his trunk was and it was so so cool!

Being 'blessed' by an elephant!

On the way back to Coimbatore we stopped at an orphanage for children with HIV and we got to watch them perform little songs and dances (including the song ‘Making Melodies in my Heart which I sang in Sunday school in Kenya). Then they let them loose and the kids all grabbed our hands and pulled us to the playground where I spent the next hour so very happy! I loved taking pictures of all my students interacting with the kids so freely and joyfully. Shouts of ‘Akka’ (older sister), ‘Ana’ (older brother), ‘Uncle’, and ‘Auntie’ rang out from across the playground as they raced around showing us their games and including us in their activities. One 13 year old girl Venitra gleefully showed me her room- her bed and trunk and all her drawings. She told me that usually every day is so sad but today is “very jolly” because we had come.

Beautiful Venitra from the HIV orphanage

At the very end as we were supposed to be saying goodbye and loading onto the bus, a little boy came to me and put his hands up for me to pick him up. I did, and he wrapped his little legs tightly around my waist and twined his little arms around my neck, laid his head on my shoulder, and started to cry! Of course then I teared up as well! Playing with those sweet children was the best part of my birthday! But it was also super cool to be in India because I don’t think I would have gotten 'blessed' by an elephant anywhere else!

Group pic!

  Another special birthday treat was getting to Skype with my family on Sunday afternoon! We are on 3 separate continents but somehow we were all online at the same time and could (mostly) hear each other (although I was yelling into my microphone on my screen at a restaurant)!