Picnic day.

The boys love picnic day because it is a chance to leave the children's home and go swimming in the river. They strip down to their underwear and jump in. Many baby fish were caught and killed that day in an attempt to bring home a pet. The boys grabbed raw dough from the kitchen to feed their fish and I knew it was only a matter of time...

I am outfitted in my Indian bathing suit... the same clothes I sleep in or wear on a daily basis. The bathing suit I brought will have to wait to be worn until I am back in the west. Women here just swim in their clothes, if they swim at all.

Most of the women just put their feet in the water or wear their Salwar Kameez into the water. Liza and I seemed to put everyone in a state of shock when we said we wanted to swim across the canal that was on the other side of the road from the river. There is a bit of a current and steep banks. We went with one of the men who is a strong swimmer. The director and others went searching for a rope and came up with a long stick. They were convinced we were going to drown. We ventured into the water and swam at a diagonal to the current and made it to the other side without any difficulty. Everyone was surprised that we were able to do it, and the stick wasn't needed. Even when we went back to the river where everyone was at, they looked at us in disbelief saying, "YOU did?! YOU swam across the canal." Most women in this culture are not used to doing these types of things, which is probably one of the reasons we were told we couldn't go on a short hike with the boys earlier in the day. I was grateful for a brisk swim so that I could get some exercise.