Summer Holidays – Jaysingh’s Birthday Celebration and Computer Education

Today is Jaysingh’s birthday. Jaysingh is one of the boys who live here at the Ashram. Jaysingh and Pawan have both been here with us for the last three years and have become a part of our family. In March we wrote about Pawan and told that we were not sure about his date of birth. So we celebrated Pawan’s birthday last month and in the same way we celebrated Jaysingh’s thirteenth birthday today, too, having decided a day for his birth.

Last month we had a rather ‘traditional’ birthday party for Pawan, with a cake, presents and some of his friends coming over. They danced and played some games. Today we decided to celebrate differently. It is really hot in the last days with the temperatures reaching 50 degrees centigrade, so we thought we would have a big water fight to cool down. We bought balloons and thought we would fill big tubs and buckets. Well, it doesn’t matter how much you plan, it mostly comes in another way.

In the afternoon it started raining. The rain is actually a very welcome because it nicely cools down the air around. Very quickly we had nice temperatures again – but were in no mood for a water fight. So we changed the plan. Instead of cutting a cake, Jaysingh could distribute ice-cream and we played some games. Of course he also got presents – a set of new clothes and colour pens. It was a great and very special day for him.

The boys are anyway having a good time at the moment. They have summer holidays! Mohit, the third boy living here at the moment, has gone to visit his family and the two are left here, enjoying summertime.

As they have so much extra time, Ramona decided to give them computer lessons. So now they start the computer every day to learn dealing with this technology that has become so important. They had some trouble handling the mouse and getting the cursor where they wanted it to be but now they are doing quite well. Ramona showed them an online program where they can practice their mathematic skills. So the internet now comes in use in helping them not forget everything over the holidays.

Pawan is very quick in picking up how to work what to do on the computer and he seems to have more interest than Jaysingh. That is nothing new, in school, too, Jaysingh enjoys the yoga classes more than any other subject. We heard him say to the other boys that he wants to train his body. But on the computer we can get even him to train adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing numbers. It is simply much more fun than pen and paper!