Journal 14.3: Few days away from 'the' day

               We began making the decoration for the entrance today. We painted huge pieces of chart for the card soldiers, and also cut red and black paper into clovers, spades, hearts and dice for the streamers. We made 4 big dice using cardboard and black and white chart paper. While some of us continued doing these things, two of my friends and I went to discuss the material requirement list with the the quality management officer, the coordinator and one of our teachers. They helped us trim down the list according to the budget set. 75,000 rs was our budget. So we had to fit in the cost of all the materials like yellow gift wrappers, many packets of yarn, a lot of boxes of glue, masking tape, red, black and white balloons, double sticking tape, different types of decorating paper and also the gifts for students along with all the food for around 100 people within this limit. So we reduced the number of some of the items required for the decoration. We then made one lantern to check if the method works or not.  We blew up a balloon, applied glue around it and wrapped it with thread (instead of yarn). When we popped the balloon after a few hours, it shrunk. So we tried again and this time put more glue and wrapped the thread really tight. It worked! So we showed the coordinator, and she loved it!

Journal 14.2: The interior...

Today, we planned the interior of the seminar hall in detail. We thought of making red and black lanterns and putting yellow lights in them. It was that second when it struck us that the white boards would be empty. So we thought of sticking envelopes for each person on them, so everybody could write confessions or anything on chits of paper to anybody and drop it in their envelopes. One board for the guys, the kings and one board for the girls, the queens. We also hung A4 size card – (queen of hearts and king of heart), each with a picture of each one of the students' pictures on the ceiling. To suit the theme, we also included red and black drapes. Since the management told us that purchasing yellow lights would be way too expensive, we planned to stick yellow gift wrapping paper on top of the lights. Finally, we decided to blow red, black and white balloons, to fill the corners with.

Journal 5.7 : Routine followed this month...

Today, we shifted all the plants from the respective cabins to the bridge so that they could receive enough sunlight through the weekend. We followed this routine through out the month and observed healthy growth of almost all of our plants. However, my plant, the boston fern had a few brown leaves. I then realized that it was high time I add the fertilizer. We also took the bulbs from plants that were showing stagnant growth into new pots with soil that was a better mixture of red soil, clay, peat and also organic matter. We cut off the brown leaves and added some soil on the roots that were popping out of the surface in some of the plants.

Journal 9.6 : A little philosophical..

Since it's a Sunday today, my instructor paced out his session and talked a lot about the importance and benefits of yoga. He explained how our mind is the reason to anything that happens in our life. When we very desperately want something to happen, circumstances happen in such a way to make it happen, just like what Swami Vivekanandha wrote in one of his books. Strong belief and faith are powerful enough to make anything happen. Yoga helps in keeping only good thoughts in mind. It increases memory power and concentration. It also removes the five toxins stress, fear, anger, depression and anxiety from our body. He then taught us pranayama (breath control), which is a form of yoga that regulates the nervous system and also controls the mind, bringing the very energy in you. We then did surya namaskaram and a few other asanas before ending the session with deep relaxation.

Duration : 2 hours

Journal 14.1: Planning ahead!

We, the DP year 1 students, are going to give a farewell to our seniors. I missed the first two farewell discussion hours for the decoration of the seminar hall (where all the events will take place) because of other school work. But I loved the ideas my friends came up with as soon as I listened to them in the next discussion. All I was there for until today, was when we all came up with a theme for the farewell : HOUSE OF CARDS. My friends planned to decorate the entrance with soldiers made up of cards, a banner which says 'Happy Farewell!' in black and red, and some strip lights, along with the grand red carpet. They also came up with the idea of setting up a photo booth right next to the seminar hall doors.