I am finally here!!

I am finally here!! I have been dreaming about coming to India for so long. It is absolutely nothing that I expected. It is the best place I have ever been. The people are so nice here. Everyone waves and smiles at us whenever we pass by. Today we went to a boarding school. This school is what YMAD sponsors, and it is filled with two boys and the rest are girls. As soon as we got there, they swarmed us. They wanted to hug us and hold our hands and shake our hands. They taught all of us a handshake the moment we got there. Whenever we said hello or waved at them, their faces would start to glow with excitement. It was so good to see these children so happy. After our lessons, we started playing games with the girls. We were in the middle of playing limbo and I stepped aside to just observe how everyone was acting. Everyone in YMAD had girls swarming them and hanging all over them. I look to the side of me and I see this little girl crying. I step over to give her a hug and make sure she was okay. I asked her, her name and she said Sarika. She hugged me tighter than anyone had ever hugged me in my life and then she ran away. I was concerned so I told Holly and Sarah. Sarah began telling us that these girls are not allowed to show emotion and they are just so happy that we love them. Even though we don’t speak their language and we can’t understand each other, they know we love them because of the looks we give them and how we hug them. They have never known such love and it gets really emotional. They never get any attention. By this time, Holly and I were crying. Sarika comes back running into my arms and hugs me stronger than before. We were both crying so hard. We hugged for probably twenty minutes and then we found out that the girls had to leave. Sarika and I start walking over to her backpack and some girls swarmed me, wiping my tears and telling me not to cry. I get to the point where I have to drop her off and she turns to me and speaks in perfect English. She says, “You can’t cry, I cry. You can’t cry.” So I told her that she can’t cry either and she just looked up at me with her glowing face and said, “I love you.” I told her I loved her too and she just kept repeating, tomorrow, tomorrow. I have never met such sweet people that want to be loved so much. The only thing I want is for Sarika to never be sad again and to know that I will love her for the rest of my life. Lots of love - Ally