A Day To Remember

Today was the absolute utmost of happy and so terrifically sad. Over the past five weeks, every friday we went to a local school to “volunteer,” but the work we do feels like anything but volunteering. We are working with various students of 8-10th standard, teaching them English. In return for these language lessons, information about our country and some famous people from the U.S., we have gotten more than we could have ever bargained for.

The bonds we made with these children were impossible to describe. Though we do not speak much Hindi, and they do not speak much English, we communicated through so much more than words. There was this sort of unspoken language that we shared. A language consisting of smiles and thoughts; Ideas that cannot be fully expressed through any given speech. This language consisted of laughing at ourselves for horrible pronunciations and mistaken words. It was talking about what we like to do, our favorite foods, and what America is like. They taught us hand games and dances and songs. But above all of these lessons, they taught us much much more.

This is a school that does not have the luxuries of a private school. With students whose parents are mostly illiterate, or who face problems with joblessness and various addictions, many students come from a troubled background.  

They were truly some of the greatest kids I have ever met. They cherished their education like no child in the U.S. ever will. You could tell how grateful they were for the opportunities they had. From them I learned that education is a golden gift and to be appreciative of all the knowledge we are able to obtain. Their school is their “Temple Of Knowledge.”

To say our goodbyes to them today was heartbreaking to most of us. The idea that we will never see their faces again, nor hear of their successes in life, or see where they end up in this world is so sad. But to think that we had the pleasure of meeting these special children makes all worthwhile. This is a memory that I am confident we will all hold in our memories for the rest of our lives. I will always remember the faces of these little children. I will always remember their beautiful smiles and the things they taught me.