Deepa's...something starting with D, just to defy Kate?

Hi everyone! Deepa here, for the first time. Kate was actually feeling a little tired, so she went to lie down instead of updating Kate's Korner (oh no! But she's not here to protest). Though I don't know if I have anything to say that Alice hasn't already written about. (By the way, if you're not reading this on a blog reader, make sure you go read Alice's post from today as well, not just the one on the top of the screen.)

Some things that Alice didn't mention about our lives at UCH: firstly, Annual Day! In our very first week at UCH, everyone was in quite a flurry over the upcoming anniversary of the founding of the Home. We were given the impression that it would be a big function, with a number of guests and perhaps some of the important donors. The children were preparing different types of performances, and many of them were taking part in a rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" - they would sing the song and do a little dance, wearing special animal masks created by the volunteers, and would be accompanied by another group of children playing the song on the recorder.

The recorder groups were having quite a hard time with the song, especially since most of them were more interested in figuring out how to play songs from Sivaji (the most popular Tamil movie at the moment, which we saw when we were in Chennai - and it was a really good thing that we did, because it's seen as common knowledge at UCH!) on the recorders. Eventually Megan, the volunteer coordinator, decided that they would just have a separate recorder performance to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Hot Cross Buns". Then, we had lots of singing practice sessions, and all of us have now heard the words in the jungle, the mighty jungle more times that anyone should ever have to. (The ironic part is that the second verse is in the village, the quiet village - a line that was never, ever sung quietly!) AND we spent lots of our spare time creating and painting papier-mache masks for the children.

Long story short - Annual Day was not as big a shin-dig as we thought it would be, considering that the only people there were us and the staff. Who are always there. Oh well. It was still quite fun, except for the minor things that went wrong - the recorder group never learned the second part of "Mary" and instead repeated the first two lines over and over, the girl who was supposed to play the Lion (a three year old, no less) bowed out at the last moment, and then the singing group, who had practiced a simple little dance made up by Kate and Alice to do as well, completely forgot to sing because the background music was so loud. Again, oh well. The three of us did get to wear saris, which made up for it all!

That was just a tiny snippet, but Alice really did say it all! Plus we have to get going - we have spent so much time on the Internet today, you have no idea. Love to you all, especially to my family who have been haunting this blog so well! Thanks! And we'll come to Bangalore soon, we promise. The book circuit awaits!

-Deepa