RIP

The first week of school. Good, God! What a week. I can feel the pressure on my neck which has been bothering me the whole week. We were all excited for the week to begin. I had all my lesson plans ready. Attended the Fire Marshall Training and completed the course and now I am a Fire Marshall for my school (yay!) The day arrived and just before the classes were about to start we get a horrible news that one of our students, a very lovely and well-loved boy, died the previous night in a freak accident. It was so surreal. I can still feel my surprise at the staff meeting. Looking at the crying faces of some of the teachers, I am wondering what is this. Are they serious? The boy who had read the article I had posted in the Classroom portal and responded just a couple of days before school that he enjoyed the article and looking forward to knowing more about it. The student who did very well in my subject and whom I thought can be a very good candidate for GCSE in Computing. I tell you, that day was a terrible day. We had to mobilize for some child psychiatrist and psychologists so that they can help the kids and the teachers deal with their loss. His friends were devastated. It wasn’t easy at all. A week has gone by and still, people are struggling. At least the students and friends are slowly accepting the fact that they won’t be seeing him anymore.

We can only imagine what their parents are going through. Some kids have written some poems, eulogies, etc to be given to his parents. We are waiting until they are ready to receive it. Will they ever be ready? Death is something I always find it hard to handle. This one hit a little too close to home. I haven’t been to the school for too long, but there are teachers who have been teaching him for years and I can’t even imagine what they feel like. All I can think of now is: I am glad to have known him even if it was only for a very short time and may his dear soul rest in peace!

Cars and games

I almost forget that I own an iPad. Because ever since the speaker stopped working all of a sudden (the voice is very very feeble) , I haven’t been using it for my Skype calls. And since Kindle replaced my iPad as my reading device (I did use my iPad for almost 3/4 years as my reading device) I hardly find any use for it. But the only ones who have been using it are my nieces and nephew whenever they visit me or I visit them. Recently when I took it to a service center to see if they can fix the speaker, which apparently they cannot and suggested me to do exchange it for a latest version…..No, Thanks!, I realized that most of the apps that are there in the iPad are all games and none of which I play. I am not into games. I don’t have any game on my phone. I did install some during our Bali and Cambodia trip but those were mostly puzzles and were used only in groups. When I took stock of the games on the iPad I was surprised to the see the number of games related to Cars. Yes, those belong to my nephew.

I don’t know what I expected from the kid who has this collection at his home.

Can you count the number of cars in this photograph? And this is just a small set of the ones he owns. My sister didn’t find a big enough table to display the whole set. 🙄

I can’t wait for him to come visit me next weekend and he has already told me that he wanted a Thomas and Friends set and like a good aunt I have got it ready for him 😉

Zoo Park

For my youngest niece any place she sees some animals, live or otherwise, is a zoo. The other day I took them to a park and she saw these animal sculptures and she wanted to go and visit them. She called the whole area as zoo. And I had to take them again to the same ‘zoo park’ as she calls it. She wanted to go and pet the lion and sit on the horse. And started to make a fuss when I told her that it is not allowed to walk on the grass. So I had to tell her that these animals might bite her if she went anywhere near them 😉 I think she believed it even though she didn’t really want to.

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “zoo.” Use the word zoo, or find a word that contains it. Have fun!

 

SoCS Badge by HopeFloats@ My Leaky Boat

Another play area

Another place for the kids to play for a while. It is in a mall and costs around Rs150 per hour on a weekend and Rs100 on a weekday. I am really running out of places to take them and they want new places everyday to play 🙄

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Why Children’s Drawings Matter

I think I understand this. That is why I have got some drawings of my first niece attached to my room doors.