Winter News 2012

December 26, 2012

We want to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

First of all I would like to thank Talassi for her generous donation to our school with which we could buy food for two months. During the off season it is difficult for us to support the homestay with income form the shop.

After the summer vacation we started again with the regular classes. There were a few special occasions we would like to share with you. As you all know, Indians are very good at celebrating festivals. One of them is Dushera. With this festival we celebrate the victory of good over evil. All the children went to a fair where they enjoyed the good food and watched the fireworks. Fifteen days later we celebrated Diwali; the festival of lights. The day before Diwali we prepared a lot of great Indian sweets and bought a lot of firecrackers. At the day of Diwali all the children came together at the school and we started with a nice game of Bingo. Then we did a small puja at our place. We ended the night with a disco, overeating of sweets (we even did a competition who could eat the most of a spicy Indian snack) and of course fireworks.

Furthermore we would like to mention that since November we have two volunteers at our school: Sonja and Sabine. Sonja is nice woman from Brasil who loves to teach English in a dynamic way. Sabine is great woman from the Netherlands and helps the children to become more confident in speaking English and more creative in their English writing. Next to their English teachings they also learn the children about the different cultures. For example Sabine celebrated ‘Sinterklaas’, a typical Dutch celebration, and Sonja played a visual game in which she explained something about the culture in every country that was pointed out on the globe.

On the 23 of December we celebrated Christmas in less traditional a healthier way. Instead of overeating, we had a sports day! Each class performed a poem or a song. They were practicing their performance every day after lunch for two weeks in advance. Next to that we had a competition between various groups with some traditional games like a sack race, a three-legged race and running with a lemon on a spoon. The teachers and parents also had a competition. At the end had a great lunch together and Children got gifts and prizes.

In March 2013 the new school year will start. Like every year this means that we need to make some investments for uniforms, books, stationary etc. We would be very pleased to receive some support from you for these investments.
For details on the contributions you can think of, see the “appeal”.

We really appreciate your years of support, with which Ganga Valley school can give the right education for the children in Rishikesh.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!