"It is good for health!"

(The below was written on Saturday. But my internet wasn't cooperative enough to post it then...)

This week, I had some opportunities to encourage the girls in healthful living. The first came earlier this week when I was awakened at 5:30 by a strange sound. We hear many strange sounds here….monkey chatter, Hindi loudspeakers, musical truck horns, a distant pounding that Kathy and I puzzle at every morning…, but this one was different. A groggy pushing aside of my bedroom curtain revealed its source: many of the teenage girls were jogging laps around the median in the middle of the gravel yard outside my window. Since I had never previously been wakened this way, my guess was that the girls were preparing for their sports day competition at school on December 9^th. On Thursday, I decided to join the girls. After all, I have greatly missed regularly jogging since coming here. Upon seeing me emerge from my front door in the darkness, the girls chorused: “Didi (big sister), good morning! Didi, you like jogging?” Although the median the girls run a loop around is tiny, I suppose it’s not any more monotonous than a treadmill! It WAS wonderful to run again.

Exercise is not prioritized here as part of the daily schedule like it is in the US. I suspect that after the December 9^th Sports Day at school, the girls will stop the morning runs. Perhaps I can convince a few of them to continue going with me because, to use their phrase, “it is good for health.”

The second opportunity to encourage healthful living came on Thursday evening. Kathy and I had been completely out of vegetables in our kitchen and had not been able to get to the market so I was thrilled when the dinner menu (a meal for which we always join the 6^th -12^th grade girls) was potatoes and turnip greens. Since the girls don’t like green vegetables I shocked quite a few of them when I asked if was enough for seconds. “More, Didi?? You want more?” Although simple, their meals are always very tasty, but this was the first time I’d asked for seconds. (Usually I am the last to finish eating anyways, and their portions are small so I don’t want to take more than a normal share of food.) But this time I was vegetable deprived and I knew that none of the girls would be taking seconds even if some was left in the big steel serving pot. Once they realized that I really did want more, huge grins split their faces and about 7 or 8 of them got up to help dish it onto my plate. A single serving was left in the serving pot. They thoroughly scraped the last of it out onto my plate and two chapattis were pushed into my hand to use to eat the greens. (They don’t use silverware.) Even though I was the only one eating by this time, I thoroughly enjoyed my second portion I told the chorus of grinning onlooking girls that I love green vegetables for they are “good for health.”