Happy Birthday, Navyug! A Grand Celebration-jojo. in transit.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Happy Birthday, Navyug! A Grand Celebration

So, I’ve been talking about it for a while now haven’t I? The school where I work finally had it’s founder’s day (39th birthday) celebration today! The whole thing was about five hours long full of speeches, performances, songs, awards, etc. And I was right in the thick of it. I think this is the first time I’ve really felt apart of the school. And it was awesome!

I sang lots of songs and performed in the Pahari (people from the hills) dance as a boy. hehe. Everyone was really sweet and said I did a great job. My 400+ students were too adorable about it. Telling me what a wonderful dancer I am (which I am not) and telling me how “smart” I was looking. (smart meaning cool/good/sharp).

And Lord knows I’ve been having a bit of rough patch these past couple months post winter break, but I think that’s behind me now. I’m right at the home stretch and I’m starting to get sad about it. I almost teared up today at the end when we were seeing this super cool birthday song. All the kids were smiling and singing at the top of their lungs. The teachers were dancing on stage and feeding each other cake. The drums were going crazy and it was just SO MUCH ENERGY in the room. And like I said, everyone was so sweet to me about my dancing and my coordinator teacher looked me in the eyes and said very seriously, “WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU.” Try not to feel something when that happens, I’ll tell ya. I nearly lost it. And this is a far cry from just two weeks ago when I had basically a meltdown in school and the very same teacher had basically said that I had done nothing for the school. (Though after mulling this over myself and with my fulbright liaison, we definitely figured out that this was more of result of the impending paperwork/government checks comin’ up. Turns out that was true as they later explained that they are under a lot of pressure right now. They needed me to administer tests based on what I’ve taught the kids in order to have something to show the higher ups. Apparently the next “Check” determines the inner Navyug school rankings. My particular school is the first of nine and cares A LOT about their ranking.)

Anyway, I was so glad to be apart of today’s festivities! I had a ball.

We always have the best posters courtesy the art Ma’am. (Is it sad that I didn’t know what inculcate meant exactly…?) Ps- The boy in this picture reminds me of Mr. Bean. He’s also really silly and he’s always trying to trick me. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s not.