“Cat Daddy,”

Monday November 21,

I quickly got used to the culture here mostly because the people, especially the kids in the schools, are awesome. They want to be loved and they want to learn like crazy and it makes me want to be that much better. I was concerned after the first day that what we taught wouldn’t stick with the kids but one of the most inspiring and reassuring things was when we came into our village school in the morning (we teach a village school early in the morning and we teach a boarding school for girls in the afternoon) they all wanted to do “bones,” “high five,” and “shake hands,” all things that I taught them the day before in my lesson about introductions. Today we did health exams and my job in the whole production was to entertain the kids who were done with their exams or hadn’t done them yet and it was tough but fun. I taught them “Simon
Says” which was difficult but they loved it and I then taught them some American dances such as “Cat Daddy,” “Dougie,” “Berney,” and fist pumps. It was funny yet awesome. With the boarding school girls, some of them taught me, Cole, and Logan a bunch of Bengali words. They taught me how to say, “I Love You” which is “Ami tomarkay palo basi” and that was way cool. After a good day of teaching the village school and the boarding school, we walked the girls out to the truck that they stand on the back of to ride home on and the truck wasn’t there. While waiting, we played an Indian version of “Duck, Duck, Goose” and I had one of the most amazing moments of the trip and probably of my life. It was raining and one of the girls I have already become good friends with, Khakhori, asked me to come under a tree for shelter when she said, “Andy, please come.” It made me feel like we really meant something to the children in these schools and made 9 months of training and fundraising all worth it.

Andy Sorensen