On the 26th of January we celebrated the Indian Republic Day. Since 73 years India is declared a republic, what a nice reason to celebrate. The children sang the national hymn and Vijji drew a beautiful Rangoli around the flag. Everyone got a small gift: Jilebi and caramel candy.
For breakfast we really enjoyed sponsored special food: Idli and Vada with Sambar and Chutney. To celebrate the special day, Clara, Lisa and I prepared a program of 6 challenges and games. We separated the girls in two groups, the blue group and “the 7 princesses of The Hope House” – the girls chose their names! In each game, the groups collected points which eventually added up to a total of 73 points for the blue group and 94 points for “the 7 princesses of The Hope House”.
Just after the delicious breakfast we started with our first game: a relay race. The idea of the game is, that two people share one pant, putting each one leg in the pant. Your team partner and yourself have to work together in order to develop a technique to be the first one (of the two competing teams) who reaches the aim.
The time flew by and we only had one more game left before lunch and this one was a true challenge. The midday heat really hit the girls but their enthusiasm about the game boosted them. We played a German game which is also popular in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, called “Brennball” we translated it as fireball. It could be compared to a different version of baseball, without a basball bat. Team one is the running team, team two will catch the ball.
The person first in line of the running team, throws the ball anywhere far away and starts running around the field, as team two has to catch the ball and throw it into the bucket in the middle of the field. As soon as the ball is in the basket the running child has to stop.
After 15 minutes we changed the teams and when we finished the girls were really into the game, discussing the
rules, points and guessing the achieved points.
Yesterdays lunch was also sponsored! After the exhausting games of the morning the children really appreciated their favorite meal: Biryani. We took a small break, sang happy birthday to the girl, who sponsored the meal, and shared the big cake.
When the girls got their strength back and the weather was cooling down, we started off by playing "Lemon-run". One person out of each team had to balance a lemon on a spoon in their mouth, around a parkour of chairs and bicycle wheels.
Next up we prepared two big pots of water. One apple was swimming in each pot. (See the picture above...) Every girl had to compete against a member of the other team, to catch the apple with their mouth, as fast as they could. It is not as easy as it sounds, the moment you dive into the water the apple will dive down as well and while you will try to dive deeper you will eventually breathe water!
The last game of the day was a sack race. Even the small children joint us with great laughter which inspired also staff members to join. What a nice end of the beautiful day. All of the girls got small presents as a “thank you” for playing fair and respectful.
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