Today is my last day in Bangalore, India, and as if it wasn’t hard enough to leave this place it just got even harder. To celebrate the last night of our 3rd month on the race the ladies on my team decided to order pizza…A REAL TREAT ON THE RACE!! After eating pizza we decided to take what we had left over to family that lives in a shack right down the street from where we are living. We have visited this house many times bringing foods and treats, and we often see the children who stay in this house outside rummaging through our dumpster, so it was definitely a family I wanted to visit one more time before leaving. When we arrived at the shack the little girl who lives there came running up to me excited that we had come to visit again. We gave the woman living in the shack the pizza and I picked up the little girl who was tugging on my skirt. Just as I picked up this precious little girl a man walked outside the shack and began to try and communicate with me with the little English he spoke. After struggling through communication for about 10 minutes, in the rain, we figured out that this man was asking for us to take the little girl with us. He told us that she did not have a mother or father and then proceeded to ask the little girl if she would like it if I was her mom. She smiled and shock her head yes. I kindly declined and told him that I wish I could. As we started to say goodbye to the family for the last time I kissed the little girl goodbye and went to put her back down. As soon as I sat her down and started to walk away she began to cry and then grabbed my hand. It was by far one of the hardest moments on the race so far to have to walk away from a child crying and running after me like I was her mother. India is going to be missed…but more than the country itself…it’s the people and the children that I will miss most! Tons of little ones like this that have captured my heart make it a place that I most come back to!
