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Lurching along the dirt road, I gaze out the window at rural Orissa in northeastern India as the car bounces over potholes, sending plumes of red dust billowing behind it. The small villages we pass are as familiar to me as if I had been here only last week. The shacks that line the river, their plastic or tar paper roofs held down with rocks. The smell of curry and incense hanging thick in the air. The tiny shops and vendor stalls selling sarees or pots or candies, the mangy dogs and cows nosing at piles of trash, the rickshaw drivers pedaling through traffic alongside schoolgirls with their braided hair and backpacks. People seem to fill every square inch of space. It is exactly as I left it a year ago.

I glance at my daughter sitting next to me, trying to gauge her reaction. She's looking out the far window with eager eyes. It's not the street life we're passing that has Chandler enthralled; although it's her first trip to India we have been traveling in the country for over a week now, and she's grown acclimated to the scene outside the window. Like me, she is excited to be on our way to the orphanage, at last. The reason we are here in the first place; the reason I have brought my fifteen-year-old child halfway around the world. To spend a week with a hundred children at the Miracle Foundation home who had captured my heart the year before. Their photographs line the walls of my house, occasional letters and drawings arrive from them, I write about them and fundraise for them. My desire to bring my own daughter to this place, to this experience, has led us to this moment.

I turn my head back toward the passing palm and ashoka trees, and the river glittering in the afternoon sun. Questions ricochet silently inside me. What will the kids look like? Will they have grown much? Changed? Will they remember me? What will Chandler's reaction be, what will she feel? Then we are pulling through the gates into the ashram. The large open space in the middle of the compound is empty, no one there to greet us. I realize they are not yet expecting us. We get out of the car and start up the little pathway that leads between buildings to the interior courtyard.

One by one, they begin to spy us; I see little brown faces peeking out around corners and through bushes. Slowly the ashram comes to life. Word of our arrival spreads and dozens of grinning, jumping children surround us on the path and pour into the courtyard. Within seconds we are engulfed by barefoot children grasping

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