During three days in India, Michelle Obama danced with children and then danced some more. She played hopscotch and clasped hands with each of the 15 schoolgirls she joined for a museum field trip.
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — During three days in India, Michelle Obama danced
with children and then danced some more. She played hopscotch and clasped
hands with each of the 15 schoolgirls she joined for a museum field trip.
Images of her dancing with the children in Mumbai ran virtually nonstop on
TV and were plastered across the newspapers.
For that, Mrs. Obama won glowing praise Saturday from administration
officials who said the events she did on her own in India were among the
most successful of President Barack Obama’s 10-day, four-country tour of
Asia.
“She clearly reached the Indian people through her direct interactions
with young Indians,” Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to the
president, told reporters Saturday.
Rhodes said events where the first lady engaged young people and spoke
with them about their concerns sent “a very powerful message that we’re
not just speaking to the Indian elite. We’re speaking to the broad Indian
populace.”
Before introducing Obama at a town hall last Sunday in Mumbai, Mrs. Obama
told a gathering of college students that she never imagined, growing up
in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, that she would serve her country
as first lady.
She kicked off her flats to shake her hips with children, and after
touring the crafts museum she sat with the girls beneath a canopy of
trees, sharing mango juice and entertaining their questions.
She urged the girls to get an education and study hard.
“I think her star power and her ability to send a positive message about
America to the world was a real key takeaway of the Indian trip,” Rhodes
said.
His boss, national security adviser Tom Donilon, concurred. He said the
first lady had represented her country well.
Mrs. Obama joined the president on his stops in India and on an
abbreviated visit to Indonesia, where he lived for several years as a
child, before she returned to Washington.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
(AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim, Pool)
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