Day 3: India

We got to the hotel and we went to the Agra Fort of the Mughal Dynasty, created by four emperors. The walls are 20 meters thick. Fatehpur sikri is a city that has been preserved for the past 400 years and the city was abandoned because they could not get water. Then we went to the Taj Mahal. I have seen lots of famous monuments but nothing could have prepared me for the Taj. I walked through the garden and made my way around the entrance and there was the Taj. It is such an incredible monument. India is so busy and non-stop that when you get the Taj it feels like time stops. It is quiet and calm and serene. As I walked up the path the Taj just gets more and more beautiful. It is something that you can’t capture in a picture. I had to keep pinching myself that I was there and I was looking at the real thing. It was amazing. The next day we went to Mother Teresa’s Ashram. I didn’t really know what to expect, but when I studied international social work I had the opportunity to visit a lot of orphanages. However, this was so much more overwhelming then I ever could have anticipated. First, a nun who worked with Mother Teresa met us and she showed us around the orphanage. The first room had newborns that were sleeping in rows and rows of cribs. Some of them had braces on their legs to keep their limbs growing the right direction. Then we went into the next room that had a large blanket on the floor about 15 newborns. They were all crawling around and these were the babies that would be adopted to Indian families. We got to hold the babies and play with them. Then we went into the next room where the disabled children were. They were sitting in beds and these children, we were told, would not be adopted. It was so hard to see such severe disabilities and suffering. Then we went to another set of rooms across the courtyard where the disabled babies would eventually go when they were older. These rooms held the disabled adults that ranged from ages 6-80. The orphanage and the nuns who managed it were providing love and care for so many disadvantaged children and adults and while it was good that these babies, children and adults were being well taken care of, it was so, so sad. I am still trying to process everything that I saw.