Bye for now India – hello Sydney. A picture drawn by one of the cutest kids in the world – and flying into Sydney! Two loves! 

A  great way to spend the day – my last day at Tender Heart (for this time!) a delicious and healthy meal for the WOOPIE kids plus a beautiful dance performance. They love to dance and have such natural rhythm. They are a total joy to be with.

I have been doing some ‘exercises’ with the special needs kids. They are creative and imaginative as well as being physically and cognitively beneficial. The kids get to ‘imagine’ as sorts of things from being an animal to playing musical instruments – they love it because they can do it however they want to – can’t get it wrong. Ajay , one of the teachers has been working with me and he will continue to do them after I leave.

One of the projects happening at Tender Heart is a horticulture project designed to teach the special needs children all aspects of the life of plants. They are learning everything from looking after soil, maintaining plants, and looking o to the future and how to sell these plants and provide these people with an income. A great idea. 

One almost probably mostly completed storage room – much needed and much appreciated along with a few ladders and another   strange piece of equipment clearly require for such a construction – and some things inside just to prove it works. 

Courtesy of some friends who donated a Dinosaur book, the kids with help from Rishi & Ajay made great flying dinosaurs. I wasn’t very good at making them but I was a very good target – whoever got their dinosaur closest to me got a reward of an Australian pencil

More ridiculously cute kids on outings to the local park. They remind me of a swarm of ants going nuts and running madly to climb and slide on everything in sight. They are so well behaved and soooo appreciate being taken out.

6 years ago when I first came to Tender Heart, I met 5 young girls who taught basic lessons to the WOOPIE children in the afternoon. They are Sheetal, Madhu, Jyoti, Nimmi and Chinki. Today they are all married with bubs and living with their husbands family. Today I went to visit Sheetal and Madhu today, 2 sisters who have married 2 brothers. 

As usual, when a non-Indian comes to visit, friends, neighbours, relatives also come to visit. There were people everywhere. This is a very traditional family environment and Sheetal and Madhu keep their faces covered around other men, including their father in law and they don’t talk to other men. So we basically had all the women and children in one room and men in the other room. I was floating in between, taking instructions from Sheetal and Madhu to speak to their husbands then report back to them if I liked them. I followed instructions and yes I did like their husbands so all was well

I think our party looks more fun!
This is Sheetal with the eyes wide open Prashant 

Me with baby Vhoomi who is very very new to this world and right about now she is peeing on me

And to top off the day, here are some glimpses from a short cut on the way home. Juttin was driving, and he is the s0n of Rajkumar, Renu’s driver and brother to Sheetal and Madhu.

Tender Heart needs a storage room and so in the blink of an eye it is all happening – a transformation from a blank slab to action packed brick laying. This is all one family working here- I was a little taken aback by the women carrying bricks but then that is how it is done in India. Today is their last day so we had samosas for lunch for them. 

Not content with one full on episode of Holi, Maureen & Colin and I went to Matura & Vrindavan to experience more. We stayed in a smaller place called Goverdam which was a little more calm than the upcoming Vrindavan

We found this beautiful ghat which may or may not be called Ram Kund – the first part of our time there was very peaceful, then we met up with some young boys with bags of colour, which we realised was a sign of imminent colour throwing. All good fun – mostly

A visit to Iskon temple in Vrindavan which is a very beautiful temple – HQ for Hare Krishnas world wide. Here are 2 Unsuspecting Hare Krishnas of the future