landed...but not here yet.

[Smiley and Nikkita: faculty kids. fast friends.]

I'm back and sitting here on my bed--bag still packed, legs still unshaved, India still coating my heart.

My watch says it's 1:25am there. All the kids are tucked in their beds, the bugs and bullfrogs are making strange noises, and the earth is breathing a sigh of relief for the few short hours of rest the sun is giving it. In about four hours the alarm will clang and they'll start to get ready for the new week of school--a new week without their American friends.

The goodbye was hard--oh it was hard. I don't know how it's possible to connect and attach to people so deeply in just two weeks, but somehow I manage to do it. There were hugs all over, teary faces, and promises of seeing each other again--soon. Sally told me that I was taking some of their hearts with me, and she was keeping some of mine here, so I have to come back, because then we'll all have whole hearts again.

I uploaded all the pictures from the trip and have been looking through them with a dull ache in my little heart. I know that Sally's right. I know that some of my heart is still there. It's with Nikkita and Smiley playing the hand slap game. It's at the Blind School, holding three hands on my right and four on my left and running down the sidewalk with giggling little girls. It's playing with the Sunrise Orphanage children at the river--heart so full and amazed at their beauty, but also so heavy because the word "orphan" just got really real. It's laughing with Sally about Jessi and I putting our Sari shirts on backwards. It's in our little guest house, with our humble team of six, laughing over meals and always, always, taking it one step too far. It's doing highs and lows in the evening and praying with hearts so wide open that God can't help but pour in. It's sitting at the evening program, with Angelee "seeing" me by playing with my hair and bracelet, listening to 160 children sing at the tops of their lungs, so out of tune that I feel like I can sing too. It's in the morning mist that hugs the awesomely shaped mountains, in the car with Varma trying to teach me Telugu, and in those last heartfelt goodbyes to my friends--who just two weeks ago were strangers.

Yes, India got me, just like I think we knew it would. I'm just not sure I was prepared for how hard it was going to hold on.