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PL711
26th November 2017
There's been no respite from the cold this week. Snow that fell in the high mountains 300 kms north of us has brought the night temperatures to very low for November.
This week has gone quickly with our main work concentrating on the new playground for the school.
But Friday evening things were interrupted when Rick was called to the Small Girl's Hostel at 9:30 to catch another snake! It is extremely rare to find snakes out and about at this time of the year; cold blooded animals are usually well and truly in hibernation by now. But not this chap, which Rick caught with his 'snake stick' and put into a bag for release the next morning.
It was a 4 foot (1.2 metre) Checkered Keelback, more commonly known as the Asian water snake. Completely harmless living off small fish and frogs, it was after another meal when it stumbled upon by a couple of the big girls on their way home to bed. Now it is happily hunting down by our jungle river.
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A harmless Checkered Keelback heading to freedom in the jungle.
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Last Saturday evening was a much awaited early Canadian Christmas for us all. Spearheaded by Heather Meyers, one of our four visitors from Canada, it was a fun filled evening for all involved. It started out with a big Christmas meal of Canadian food lovingly prepared in our kitchen under the eyes of Jamie Holloway another of our visitors. While she was hard at it, her sister Lindsay and Heather's fellow Canadian workmate Regan decorated the Dining Room and Church for the party afterwards. Special guests for the evening were Santa and Mrs. Claus, an Elf and Kangaroo Elf as well as Olaf from Frozen.
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Our special guests handed out early Christmas presents to every member of the Family.
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It was an awesome time for photos.
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A special photograph area was set up with some props, which were well used.
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Plenty of sweets and snacks were available, even a 'gingerbread house'!
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The 'Cleanup' was fun too!
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It was full steam ahead with the playground work by by our friends at Playground Ideas. This week has seen our main playground basically finished with the completion and painting of the fort and slide. The Nursery/Kindergarten area had some extra painting done and the School playground got a good amount done after we hired a JCB (Backhoe) to come in and dig the foundations for the various items in the playground. While it was here, the JCB finished off the filling and cleaning up around the Learning Resource Center
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Thursday was a school holiday, remembering the martyrdom of Sri Guru Teg Bahadur. November 24th is observed as the martyrdom day of this Holy Man who was the ninth Nanak of the Sikh religion. This means that he was the ninth of the ten Gurus revered in Sikhism. He wrote many books and poems which make up the holy book of Sikhism. Interestingly he was considered by many historians to be the first human rights activist of India. He resisted the conversion of Kashmiri pundits and non-Muslims to Islam during the might of the Mughal era in the 17th century. As a result, he was publicly beheaded on the orders of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. That's the history lesson for the week! But with the holiday, there were many eager hands to help with the painting.
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Dinesh one of our workers helping out with the brush.
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The basic building blocks of the new playgrounds are old tires and Rick was kept busy with many trips to Tanakpur and Khatema purchasing them. All told this week 93 truck tires and 87 car tires were purchased. Before these could be used they are washed and then painted with enamel undercoat then affixed with bolts and nuts into the various configurations, mounted in the ground and then painted with their final enamel color. So extra help was greatly appreciated by the Playground Ideas team.
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Serena loves painting!
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Rosie too!
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Many eager hands, make light work!
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The new fort getting a colour change thanks to Debby and Pinky.
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Socheata from Playground Ideas (PI) adding the final touches.
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The main Playground close to completion.
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Claus from PI, checking out the Mayan Temple in its early stage.
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Part of our main playground upgrade is the shifting of our big swing, here are the foundations being dug!
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This is how we shift bricks - sometimes!
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The new Library Resource Center (Sam Saxena Memorial Library and Resource Center) is coming along very nicely too. Besides the earth work this week the workers finished the double coat of putty on all the inside walls and have started on the outside with a coat of white cement followed by a coat of putty to smooth off the surface.ready for painting. It is really looking awesome!
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View of outside SSMLRC
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Putty work going along nicely.
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Another highlight from this week was that six of the boys of Maxton Strong School were selected in the State Taekwondo Squad of 9 to compete in the National Finals in Jaipur, Rajasthan. This is a huge achievement for our school and our boys.
To top it off, one of our boys Kishan Bisht, from Grade 7 came second in the National Finals and was selected to go to Singapore to represent India in the World Championships! Who would have thought that a boy from Banbasa could do that! We are so proud of him and also our teacher/instructor Mr Avinash Kumar (Black Belt in Taekwondo) who has put many hundreds of hours training our children to this standard! Great job, guys!
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Our 6 representatives in the State Taekwondo Squad, Mr Avinash Kumar, our Taekwondo instructor is fourth from the right.
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Kishan Bisht who came 2nd in the National Taekwondo Finals.
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Today, Sunday is celebrated as Thanksgiving day here on the Mission. As part of the celebration we have a thanksgiving church service followed by a Bara Khanna (big meal). As part of the Service the church is decorated with tables of produce from the farm and around the area. A special decoration item is sugar cane which we collect from our friends the Turners. This year a group of boys went and collected some cane and had fun doing so.
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Great fun collecting the sugar cane.
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And so another week ends here at Banbasa. We have seen our four Canadians leave to continue their holiday around India and we welcome Clifton back after a couple of weeks away in Australia. Thank you again for all your support and prayers.
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Blessing on you,
Rick, Clifton, Eugene & Priscilla
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