New Year in Jadan

Hari Om,

Welcome to the New Year. School has started again here after a short winter “break”. The inverted commas are because our students went on a tour for five days taking in the sights of Ajmer, Pushkar, Jaipur and Agra. They were pretty excited to have seen the Taj Mahal and the big cities of Jaipur and Agra. All in all it was a super adventure with 140 students and 10 teachers setting out in 3 buses. We sent cooks and cooking equipment with so that they could prepare meals at any moment. It was a lot of fun and they all arrived back in Jadan exhausted but extremely satisfied. For a lot of students it is their first time away from home and definitely their first time so far away from home ( Agra is 700 kilometres from here).

The next weeks will be busy in school. The Twin Vision team is coming from England to give a project on animation with clay models. At the end of their program we will have a celebration day with an art competition for all of the school students and also have the students of the Jodhpur school for the Deaf and Dumb as guests for the day. The Twin Vision team is also doing a project with the Jodhpur students before they come here.

The inspiration for the art competition mentioned above is from a Hindi movie called “Tare Jamin Par” – which translates as Stars on the Earth. It is a beautiful movie about dyslexia which, if you can get it with a translation is really worth seeing. A tears of joy movie.

Then the 26th January is India’s national day and we will have a large celebration with parades, yoga demonstrations, plays, singing, dancing and speeches from the students. Swamiji Maharaj will be here and giving His blessings to all the students which is always a cause for excitement for them. Swamiji has an amazing way of conveying His message to the students by having them constantly laughing and enjoying.

The building works are also going on at full speed. At the rate that the work is going on it could be finished by April but………… we don’t actually have funding to pay for the work to go on! If anybody has any ideas of how to help with funding for the building they are most welcome to put them forward. If you know anyone who would be interested in being part of this special experience please let them know.

As January goes on the students will start to get serious as the yearly examinations rapidly approach. The first exams will be for 10th and 12th class in March and early April. They are just getting the results of their half yearly exams which were quite good. There is an air of confidence and excitement about their preparation. In general they will all finish their courses by the end of January and then revise and have practice examinations during February.