Namaste, Sundari, aap kaisi hai?

It's been a long time.  I'm sorry.

It's good to be back.  Settling has taken a lot of time and energy, though, and with the heat and starting up at work again, I've been feeling rather drained.  It takes just a little too much energy to walk back and forth from Mother House and Shishu Bhavan twice a day, but that hasn't really stopped me from doing it.  I love those kids too much.  
So, let me give you the highlights:

- They grow so fast!  Getting back from 2 weeks in Thailand (to renew my Visa), I looked around the room and thought, "Jeez, they're so much bigger than I remember!"
- For a friend, Jyotsni is doing really well.  There is one volunteer who has been spending a lot of time with her and it's been really good.  She can stand with minimal support, is saying a few short words such as "baba," and is genuinely curious about the world in general.  You would be proud.
- There's a new boy, Vishal.  He's another cerebral palsy case, along with microencephaly.  He is very smart, though, and we're working on speech therapy with him a lot.  He knows quite a bit of Bengali, and we just taught him to count to 10.  He's a ball.  He calls across the room, "Ooooooh Vishal!  Oooooh Auntie!" at me because he knows I'll respond by making funny noises at him.
- I'm still working with Peter quite a bit.  He's going to school now, so I have less time now, but I'm incredibly glad he's at school.  You can already tell it's doing him a world of good.  I've never seen him smile quite as much as he does now.  
- Kajol got chickenpox while I was gone, but they've cleared up by now.  Poor thing was doing so much crying because she couldn't itch herself, but she was a trooper and got through it.  She's still my babes.

You can tell the heat is getting to everyone, but most of them are still making great progress.  It's a beautiful thing, guys, to be able to watch them go through so much.  Five months is a long time and a lot has happened since I first got there, and I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to watch their improvements, and even the regression of some, knowing that at some point an Auntie will take them on and get them back to where they need to be.

As for "home life,"  it's finally getting settled and I'm really liking that feeling.  I've moved into an area in one of the guesthouses that's for people working in NGOs (and therefore staying longer), which I'm incredibly happy about.  It means that I've got a fridge, a kitchen, and a really nice, spacious room.  I pay monthly, so I don't have to worry about giving money to the door man every morning.  I can decorate and make it feel like my place.  I'm pretty sure I'll be there throughout the rest of my stay.
Sudder St. is awesome.  There aren't too many of my fellow long-term Mama T volunteers around at the moment, as they've all moved closer to Mother House, but that's not so bad.  I see them at breakfast, work, sometimes lunch, and sometimes dinner.  The rest of the time I spend networking with the Indian shopkeepers.  It's ridiculously fun.  And I get a lot of free chai and juice as a result.

I think the best part about having stayed, though, is that I'm doing so much more exploring.  I really feel like Kolkata has been telling me that I shouldn't go about wasting the next few months I have.  She wants me to see, hear, touch, feel, taste everything I possibly can.  And I am trying so hard.  The good and the bad, from stomach pain to the beauty of the Botanical Gardens to the dirt and grime of the train station to the noise of the construction outside my window.  I embrace it.  Kolkata bahut kupsurat hai.  Kolkata is very beautiful.