A day of Fun, Frolic (and complete exhaustion)

June 20th, the date was marked on my calendar. It was the day of our community work. Our project this time was to take under privileged children to the Parle biscuit factory and the planetarium. The children were from “Acts of Hope”, a school run by an NGO for children whose parents cannot afford to educate them, though they are eager to.

As per our schedule, we reached office at 7:15, only to find that they would not serve breakfast until 8:00. (Hm… could have woken up half an hour later… I thought to myself. I’m sure everyone else also had similar thoughts)
After breakfast we left office in 2 buses. The school is near Sarjapur. Thanks to the peak hour traffic, it took us an hour to reach there. The children were very excited to see us.
The 50 children we were supposed to take out, were from classes 2 and 3. Not too small that we had to baby sit them, and not too old that we had to discipline them – just the right age  We also had 8 teachers coming with us. They were only coming along because it was a fun trip for them.

Once on the bus, the kids were asked to introduce themselves while we distributed sandwiches, then started the singing session. Initially no one volunteered to sing, but once someone started singing, the whole gang would join in and scream at the top of their voice.
The Parle Factory is near Peenya, so it took us a good 2 hours to reach. We walked up and down hundres of stairs in the viewing gallery to watch how biscuits were made. In the end, they played a short animation summarising the manufacture process. I personally thought the trip to the factory was a waste of time. All that it did was make us tired and hungry.
We now had to go to Cubbon Park, the caterers would get there with hot lunch. As soon as we reached the park, the children forgot how tired and hungry they were and ran to play. We literally had to drag them, make them stand in a queue to get lunch. As soon as they finished lunch they went back to their games.

At around 3:45 we set off to the planetarium. I thoroughly enjoyed the show. But since it was in English, I’m not to sure how much the kids could follow. I especially loved the part where everything goes pitch black… all you can see is the twinkling stars… fantastic!
After the show, we distributed snacks and juice to the kids and then headed back to the school.
We reached the school only after 7. We then gave rain coats to all the kids.
When we were all set to leave, the kids in one voice screamed out “thank you aunty, thank you uncle” . Then they came to shake each one of our hands and say thank you. That was really touching.
By the time we got on to the bus, we were completely exhausted. All we wanted to do was get back home. We reached office at around 8 and then went our own ways.
That was a very nice experience!