Changes, changes

Well I suppose the first big update would be that we're down to three children now (Basraj, Sanjay, Akash). It's a long story (of course, everything here always ends up being a long story), but essentially we have had endless issues with the two mothers of the three children who left (Mahesh, Poonam, Amol), particularly involving their attempts to be manipulative of their children's loyalties and to turn our home into something it is not: a hostel/boarding house. In the end, it seemed that it was simply going to be too emotionally difficult (on all counts--for us, the children, and the women) for the children to remain with us, and the children have been returned to their mothers. Above all, this experience has shown us the difficulties of taking in children with one or more living parents (even though in this case the mothers are HIV+) and we are reaffirming our commitment to taking in only those children who are orphans or whose parents are not present in their lives anymore.

In other news, the mother of one of our volunteers (Patrick) has come to visit, and the children seem to have warmed to her quite well! [photos of the "dance session" we had with her and the kids to come...] Zahra is out of town for her cousin's wedding, but Amber and I are holding our own, which is a good sign because the majority of the year, this home will have to run with 1-2 directors, not 3 as we've gotten used to.

Challenges
Behavioral issues continue to keep us on our toes...we found a knife under one of the children's mattresses recently (although he assures us it was just to keep the ghosts away) and have had to deal with stealing. However, we are quite, QUIIIIITE confident the stealing will never happen again after the first ordeal quite traumatized the offender...Additionally, Akash has been rather moody recently, although we're unsure whether this is a new development, or fairly normal for him and his age. We shall see...

Progress
The children's English continues to grow at an impressive rate (never mind that it's primarily because they get a kick out of imitating us...) and they can understand most directions, commands, and questions in English. This is a HUGE improvement from a month ago when the children used to stare at us blankly any time we tried to talk to them in English. Of course, they are still learning vocabularly, and have a great deal of ground yet to cover as far as written English is concerned, but we're proud of them anyway! :-)

Interestingly, with just three children the home feels remarkably family-like and the boys, who used to band together with the other two (Mahesh and Amol--frequently the ringleaders) and avoid adult interactions, have become increasingly affectionate, open, and personable. Oh, and the highlight of yesterday was definitely arriving at school to pick the kids up and watching from afar as Akash held the hand of one of the blind teachers at the school, led him to a rickshaw, and helped arrange with the driver where he would be taking him. It's moments like that that give us hope that these kids will grow up to be responsible, compassionate people...