With Smiles and Warm Hearts
Twenty teenagers getting onto a train bound for Nainital usually sounded like fun, for me though the thought of ten days of social work seemed like a prison sentence. One fine morning Mother decides to wake me up saying �I know what you�ll be doing these holidays, I�m going to make you useful to the society you live in by sending you away from me for ten days!!� I�m quite sure she meant my neighborhood would be thanking her for sending me away but at that point I was too sleepy to tell.
A week later I was packed up and all set to leave. Mother seemed to have this glow on her face. I think she was going to cherish these next few days forever!
The start was awful, I never expected a train journey to be as loud, as boring and as uncomfortable as this. By evening time I was washed out and had to sleep. The 3-hour jeep ride that followed the train was equally as bad if not worse. But things would change or so I hoped!
It was the second morning and I just didn�t seem to have the energy to walk the 5 kilometers to the village where we were to teach English from each day. Somehow through half-open eyes and an even more tightly shut brain I trudged the path with 9 others from the group.
The welcome however did me in. Waiting for us were about 50 children, smiling and waving. Each one of them seemed to have some sort of bright red fruit in their hands...APPLES! Aha�food! But somehow I knew what they were giving us was more than just breakfast. Later I would come to know that it was all these kids could think of as something to give us could. It was the only thing they could afford.
Their warm attitude towards us turned me over for the rest of the project. I was now up before everyone. I had my students to teach. The best part was that no matter what I would teach them, all of these kids had just one thing to say at the end of the class in their best (still broken English)��Thank you, Saar!
Everyday the cycle would continue, I would teach them and they would give me all their attention. Then everyone would get together for a massive game of football, which would usually break down into something like the running of the bulls in Spain. 50 kids and 10 teenagers after one small football was quite a sight and I�m sure that passers bye were having quite a lot of fun looking at us make fools of ourselves! It never mattered though, for the first time in my life I was giving without expecting in return and I was really happy. All I needed to see was those huge smiles. I think Thomson TV was wrong when they claimed to have broken the 5-inch smile. It happened right there in front of me and it was magic!
I don�t remember too many of their names, they all sounded the same. Their faces seem fuzzy too but those smiles and warm hearts they�ll stick with me forever. I will go back to Sattal. I don�t kow when and I don�t know how, but I know why. Smiles and warm hearts make it worth any number of hours on a bad train and that�s what I will keep forever. My advice�try it�not a journey to a sleepy village around Sattal but the smiling part. See how it changes your life. It has turned around mine!
Twenty teenagers getting onto a train bound for Nainital usually sounded like fun, for me though the thought of ten days of social work seemed like a prison sentence. One fine morning Mother decides to wake me up saying �I know what you�ll be doing these holidays, I�m going to make you useful to the society you live in by sending you away from me for ten days!!� I�m quite sure she meant my neighborhood would be thanking her for sending me away but at that point I was too sleepy to tell.
A week later I was packed up and all set to leave. Mother seemed to have this glow on her face. I think she was going to cherish these next few days forever!
The start was awful, I never expected a train journey to be as loud, as boring and as uncomfortable as this. By evening time I was washed out and had to sleep. The 3-hour jeep ride that followed the train was equally as bad if not worse. But things would change or so I hoped!
It was the second morning and I just didn�t seem to have the energy to walk the 5 kilometers to the village where we were to teach English from each day. Somehow through half-open eyes and an even more tightly shut brain I trudged the path with 9 others from the group.
The welcome however did me in. Waiting for us were about 50 children, smiling and waving. Each one of them seemed to have some sort of bright red fruit in their hands...APPLES! Aha�food! But somehow I knew what they were giving us was more than just breakfast. Later I would come to know that it was all these kids could think of as something to give us could. It was the only thing they could afford.
Their warm attitude towards us turned me over for the rest of the project. I was now up before everyone. I had my students to teach. The best part was that no matter what I would teach them, all of these kids had just one thing to say at the end of the class in their best (still broken English)��Thank you, Saar!
Everyday the cycle would continue, I would teach them and they would give me all their attention. Then everyone would get together for a massive game of football, which would usually break down into something like the running of the bulls in Spain. 50 kids and 10 teenagers after one small football was quite a sight and I�m sure that passers bye were having quite a lot of fun looking at us make fools of ourselves! It never mattered though, for the first time in my life I was giving without expecting in return and I was really happy. All I needed to see was those huge smiles. I think Thomson TV was wrong when they claimed to have broken the 5-inch smile. It happened right there in front of me and it was magic!
I don�t remember too many of their names, they all sounded the same. Their faces seem fuzzy too but those smiles and warm hearts they�ll stick with me forever. I will go back to Sattal. I don�t kow when and I don�t know how, but I know why. Smiles and warm hearts make it worth any number of hours on a bad train and that�s what I will keep forever. My advice�try it�not a journey to a sleepy village around Sattal but the smiling part. See how it changes your life. It has turned around mine!
posted by Pierre at
10:16 AM
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