Hanging Out With the Sisters!

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty uneventful at work.  I continued work on my cost sheet and met with Mr. Kiran about perfecting it.  After work Mr. Kiran dropped me off at the St. Joseph Sisters of Cluny convent for the celebration of the feast day of their founder, Blessed Anne Marie Javouhey.  I walked into the chapel where Fr. Francis had just started the Mass.  The little chapel was packed with the university kids and other parishioners who wanted to celebrate with the Sisters.  It was such a beautiful Mass.   I always love Masses when they're celebrated with a smaller crowd; they seem so much more intimate.  

After Mass, most of the adults left and all the students gathered in the Sister's "living room" to play some games.  It was so fun to play silly retreat games.  We started off singing rounds.  There was one called "Little Tommy Tinker" and another called "O how lovely is the morning." We had 4 different moving parts so everyone had to focus to sing their part.  It’s much more difficult than you would think!  My group’s strategy was to sing as loud as we could so we couldn’t hear anyone else and get confused.  It was so fun even though it's so simple.  Then after singing songs, we played some games.  There was one called Ping Pong that everyone really enjoyed.  Everyone sat in a circle and the leader would point at a person and say ping or pong.  Ping meant you had to say the person's name to your right and pong meant left.  If you weren't fast enough you were out.  And you got up and switched places every so often so you learned more names.  It was such a good way to learn names, but I got out pretty quickly because I panicked under the pressure!  

After singing and playing games we prayed and had dinner that the Sisters prepared for us. There was biryani and white rice with fish curry and toast and salad and a chicken curry.  Then for dessert there was custard and a delicious pound cake.   Dinner was so good and everyone just sat around talking.  I got to meet so many new people.  There was even a girl from California there.  It was so funny because she asked me where I was from, clearly had an American accent, but I'm so used to responding with USA that I just said America. We all sat and talked for a while before we realized that it was already 10 o’clock!  So we thanked Srs. Narcissa, Violet, and Lucia, and all 10 of us started walking home together.  Even though I've only known these kids for a few weeks at most, I feel so at home around them.  And as we were walking, one of the kids who had disappeared on his motorbike came around the corner with a string of autos for us.  How nice!  So we divided up into the autos and went home.  I was so excited about my evening that I couldn’t fall sleep!