ISA french fest

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New things are always welcomed in my life, provided that they are exciting. Learning French as a language definitely was. Initially I chose French because I couldn’t handle Hindi, but after a month I really started liking the language but what really made me fall in love with this language was the ISA trip. This activity included creativity as I took part in activities that needed me to be creative like singing. I decided to sing my song without the karaoke and therefore had to think of variations to add that could obscure the need for an instrumental background.

 

In the school we did have a lot of exposure to the language but after going over there and hearing strangers speak in French and trying to grasp their pronunciations, made me want to be able to talk that way in French too. The fest included several activities but I choose to take part in an activity that was in my comfort zone, Singing. However it didn’t quite turn out to be very comforting at all because I had to but in monstrous efforts to learn the lyrics and get my pronunciations right. I had always known that singing was my strength but singing a French song was a real challenge. Therefore for about a month prior to the fest I tried really hard to perfect my song and was dedicated to it. I am glad that I was because it made me win the competition.  During the month that I was practicing I realized that I was good at mimicking accents, which I skilfully used to my advantage to try and perfect my pronunciations.  I am really glad that I didn’t back out from this challenge because it really helped me learn the French pronunciations better, not only for songs but for my academics too.

While planning for the trip my group had only decided for specific activities that we were going to take part in however when we reached there the thrill of ambiance of the fest made us took part in spontaneous activities like face painting and Tableau. It was really fun but it did require a lot of collaboration on our part as we had really less time to decide our strategies. We required collaboration in setting up our stall and I have to say that I have never seen a better display of teamwork in my life. And that mixed with the fitting name of the fest “romance”, made me fall in love with the language of love itself.

Face Painting  Tableau

 

CAS Retribition

From wondering what “lights, camera, ACTION” would sound like from hearing it yourself while being in front of a camera is a long way. Retribution gave me this opportunity to actually experience it. A fellow friend who intended to make a web series approached me with a raw idea of the show. At first, I thought of myself as incapable of doing the role as the nature of the character was in contrast with my personality. That is when I saw the challenge in it. To learn something new and to help a friend in need. I was one of the lead roles and I knew that I would have to put in more efforts than anyone and that my performance was directly proportional to the impact of the web series. I knew that commitment and sincerity were always my weak point and to make this effective, commitment and sincerity were crucial. To execute this with our best effort, we decided to meet for one to one and a half hour sessions for at least three prior to the day decided for shooting. The shooting went on for 2 months(November/December. Not every day but on weekends when we could give more time to it). I had to manage my academics and this activity that I had taken up. I learnt how to plan ahead so that I can attend practices and not miss out on my academics.
During the rehearsal, I felt something was missing in everyone’s performance. That element was the reaction. Each and every actor including myself was failing to give a reaction to each other’s dialogues. The actors were failing to collaborate and develop an understanding as to how each dialogue would affect the dynamic of the plot, the plot progression and the each actor’s character. The synergy between actors was missing which made it look like everyone was different elements of different stories. To overcome this obvious flaw in our performance, we all decided to watch TV shows and movies more observantly. One ethical concern that I would like to reflect upon was that some scenes for dramatic effects had curse words and the video does not have an age restriction. This way children who are not of a mature age might be influenced negatively. If they are of a very impressionable age they might include such words in their daily vocabulary and other children might be affected by it thus creating a domino effect or a chain reaction. The outcome of this was not perfect but better than expected. The process taught me things I wouldn’t have learnt otherwise. Also, I learnt that there is no better feeling that earning your friend’s gratitude for helping him out.

Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3dOIU-7ogM

ISA French Fest- Only for the love of languages”

 

We went for a French competition at ISA (International School of Aamby), Aamby Valley. It was a great experience for me. My job was to create the presentation for our Francophone country which was Belgium. The presentation mainly had to include the famous cuisines and cuisines which originate from Belgium. By making the presentation I improved my vocabulary because we had recently completed the chapter of food, by making the presentation I learnt new grammer, conjugation, vocabulary and sentence structure by writing and reading in French. It was approximately 7 months since we were learning French so I didn’t know how to frame long sentences in French and that was a drawback for us. We had to engage ourselves in the French language because it was a tought subject and it was our first year of French so we had to update ourselves so that we don’t commit any critical mistakes in the Fest which would bring our whole French team down. We were running short on time for the presentation because we were given our country just 1 week before the competition so we had to come up with ideas immediately and execute them as early as possible. At first we had thought that we will decorate our stall as a Belgium Embassy but we couldn’t do that due to lack of resources and at the end we thought of making the stall look as a Restaurant where a quiz will happen, the menu was designed as a sort of question card, after each question announced anyone sitting on the table has to raise his/her hand and answer the question. For designing the stall as a restaurant we wasted a lot of resources, those resources could have been saved if we would have had a concrete idea to decorate the stall. We had a total of 2 to 3 hours to decorate the stall so doing it batchwise was practically impossible so we split ourselves into 4 teams, 1st team was handling the Arts section (Create posters, color flag, etc.), 2nd team was arranging the tables and stall according to a restaurant, 3rd team was decorating the walls of the classroom and 4th team was designing the food menus and searching for music played in Belgian restaurants. By this we learnt how to save time, increase leadership skills and work colloboratively to enhance the outcome which was/can be achieved. After the completition of this Fest, I learnt that my skills are in executing plans which are changed at last moment. From my experience I learnt that one must keep engaging in the French language to improve their language skills, communicating skills and analysing skills.

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“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” ― Mark Twain

A day with Orphan Kids – Charlie Helpage

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“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” ― Mark Twain. We h_DSC6144ad spent the day with the orphan kids from ‘Charlie Helpage’.  With the aim to make them involve in all the activities and put in all our efforts to make a memorable day for them. We had the preparations being done prior to the event. With our teachers guidance the activities were planned, like a few games, movie, dance, photo-booth, etc. and had prepared the schedule for the day accordingly.  With a group of around 7 to 8 girls we made a card for them, stating a thank you note for spending  time with us.

 

Art and craft was followed after the lovely dance and amazing games in the rainy morning. During the whole day, the one thing that touched my heart was, while I was telling a bunch of children about the card/craft that they had to make/do as part of the activity, few kids made flower and cards with heartfelt greetings for me. While I salute to their creativity, they kept me amazed with the trust that they had on me and the friend that they had found in me, whom they have just met a few hours ago.

 

_DSC6193All the volunteers were doing their part,  everyone was skilled in various field and therefore the quality of the activities did not suffer. We all made sure that we work collaboratively and simultaneously communicate with each other all the details, so that there are less problems and it is easy for us to maintain the pitch of the work. After dropping them till the bus and bidding them goodbye, cleaning and putting all the stuff was a tedious job. To work this problem out, we divided the work.
Something that I learned was that we have our parents to go to with our problems, but what about them? Whom will they go to with their problems? How fair is it on their behalf to not enjoy the privileges and luxury that we are exposed to? Across the globe there would be so many little lives like them, who would have to be dependent on other people for their happiness. Overall, interacting with them and understanding their lives was a worth learning as well as an emotional process.

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FLASH MOB

GROUP PROJECT: FLASHMOBS 2015
GROUP MEMBERS: Unnati, Avina, vidushi and sakshi (me)
This was the most interesting activity I have ever done.It was very different, spontaneous and challenging. It was a totally new concept to me as it contained performing in front of audience, talking to them, gathering their interest and persuading them to bring a change in a society.

FLASHMOB 1: On the occasion of Independence Day 15th august, 2015
ISSUE: RELIGION AND CAST
HELD IN: VR mall
Flash Mob was an initiative taken by me. It was just a spontaneous idea which had struck me at the night of 13th august 2015 and the next morning I discussed it with my friends in school who appreciated it. I wanted to do the Flash mob on 15th august 2015 the day when India got its Independence. I thought it was a perfect day to do a flash mob but it seemed impossible because there was a lot of work to do in a very short period of time. We immediately approached our sc11903553_821301461321720_765053677_nhool coordinator and gave a brief idea of what we intend to do, surprisingly she appreciated it a lot and motivated us to implement it. A Flash mob is a large public gathering at which people perform a random act or a dance and then disperse. It is more of a shock to the audience. Knowing that we had only one day to choreograph the dance, learn it, and teach other members seemed tough however we knew that if the four of us work together we would definitely make it, and we did. From that day itself we started working REALLY HARD! We needed at least 15 members however nobody was ready to join us at such a short notice, many thought that we were likely to fail as we just had a day to practice. We our parents, relatives,neighbor and friends gathered outside school. We were glad that they believed in us. Back then, we were a group of non-dancer and dancers, who had put all the efforts possible to take a step towards humanity and bring a change by increasing awareness in the society. When the day arrived we realized that our event was a huge success and the hard work paid off. It’s not important whether we danced well or not it’s important whether we were able to gather people’s attention or not. And I am very proud to say that we gathered the attention of the whole mall.11902464_898534160182378_6984905905868172625_n

By this activity I learnt a lot: I learnt that no matter how tough and impossible the situation is if we have the confidence in ourselves we can make every impossible thing possible, and that is what we did. We did start to lose hopes but we did not Scan_20150911give up, because we knew we are not alone, we are a team and we are always there to support each other no matter how tough the situation is. These were the benefits of working together as a team. I took up a lot of challenges, I did things which I had never done before such as: speaking and singing in front of at least 500 people, dancing (which I had never done before on such a huge platform), organizing the whole event and making this spontaneous idea successful, motivating the team members at every stage. I had took up the responsibility of a leader which was very challenging but worth a learning experience for media knew my strengths such as: organizing, managing, creativity etc. these helped me gain more confidence. As our first flash mob was on religion and cast we tried to show that there is no such thing like cast and religion, it is the ideologies of the people who create different groups, but in the end we are human beings and we have to have unity within us and each other so that we could face all the problems together. We took this issue on Independence Day because we wanted that with the celebration of this auspicious day we spread another message which can is as important as independence. Independence is nothing without unity between people of one country, one nation and to bring that unity back and erase the gaps of difference, casts and religions we decided to start small and organise this event in a mall where could easily find people of all casts and all religions.
We did have some ethical concerns as to we should not hurt anybody’s emotions while performing. In the drama which we did it was all about how people boycott Muslims and the ideologies which people have for Muslims. This could hurt somebody’s emotions which is not ethically and morally right.

FLASHMOB 2: on the occasion of Janmashtami 5th September 2015
ISSUE: ENCOURAGE EDUCATION FOIMG_4049R ALL.
HELD IN: VR mall
After our first flash mob we learned from our mistakes and took care of not repeating them in this flash mob. Our first flash mob motivated us to do another one as well, so we decided to give this group a name. After having a few meeting with other heads we ended up with a name of this group as “ASTH” Every letter was for a specific word and so the full form of this is “A STEP TOWARDS HUMANITY” .we also decided to make a Facebook page to gain support from the public and now our we are proud to say that our Facebook page has 376 supporters. We also sent a form for the people who were interested in volunteering to help us bring a change in the society. This form was spread in our school from grade 6-12. We collaborated with the NGO named “DISHA” which works for the same cause of education the under privileged children on the footpath. I worked with this NGO for 2 months and so we thought if we collaborated with this NGO we could have a better impact on the audience. We prepared a dance which the kids of this NGO did. We intended to collect funds for these kids so we had a donation box where people had donated money and the net total of the funds collected was around 6,700. We were well organised this time… We choreograph our dance before sending the forms to the interested participants, this led to less burden on us. We were a group of 40-45 people in total including the kids from the NGO. It was a very tough time teaching them and organising practices outside school on Saturdays and Sundays so that all the participants are on the same page. We also had early practices where I as a head was very committed and determined towards my work and did not miss any practices. We spoke tIMG_4046o our group members about why this issue is so important to create awareness of and why we are doing the flash mob on the first place. This helped them with a better understanding of what and why we are actually doing this… By this  we saw a lot of improvement in our group members as the days passed. This was mainly because they really wanted to help make a change and so they cooperated with us at every stage. It was a challenge for us to manage and teach all the 45 members of our group. However we (heads) took this responsibility as a new learning experience and tried to put the best efforts. There were many problems which took place during the event such as: the sound system did not work properly which might have led to problems in communication. However, as we could not do anything about the sound system on the spot we made sure we keep this mistake in mind for our next flash mob. This time we couldn’t even imagine that we gathered the attention of almost a 1000 people who were eager to watch us perform. If we do not consider the problems which we faced during the event, I think that the event was a great success as the main purpose was to gather the attention of the audience and spread awaredownloadness to a larger audience.

FLASH MOB 2: On the occasion of navratri 10th October, 2015
ISSUE: WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
HELD IN: school party (GARBA FEST)
We got the opportunity of mobbing a party which was organised in our school. We followed the same process of sending forms and selecting the best dancers as this was our last Flash mob and we wanted it to be perfectly organised and performed. I learnt that before catering to the society we should begin with our home and spread awareness among people with whom we meet daily. We should always start small in order to diversify later. This time we inclPICTUREuded stunts and more complicated dance steps to gather audience’s attention. As we selected the best dancers, this time we were just a group of 20 people. This was a huge challenge which we took up as we also had exams coming up in the month of October. However, we were committed and determined enough for this activity and managed our time well in order to work in a balanced way. We took up this issue because we wanted to empower girls and women (teachers and parents) working and studying in our school in order to fulfil the purpose of starting small. We all worked collaboratively during practices which showcased our hard work and teamwork during the performance. We all had different strengths which played a major role during the whole organisation of this event. It’s my strength that I have a good grasping power and that I can also choreograph dances which helped us during the initiation stages of this flash mob.12141562_865971266856611_1156706108485411454_n

These series of flash mobs were experiences worth spending time for. During the preparation stages we not only worked but also made a bunch of memories which we will remember throughout our lives. Organising flash mobs helped me work on my areas of growth such as building confidence, fear of audience, speaking skills, persuasive skills etc. I think that I had put all the efforts I could do to help make these series of events successful with other heads and all the group members.

The Footpath School!

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Helping others has always been one of the things which I could do with a lot of determination. When I got to know about this NGO called “DISHA” which has taken an initiative to teach the underprivileged kids, I made my mind to volunteer for 2 months. There was no such school type thing it was just the footpath and us. We used to put a mat on the footpath and teach. I was able to provide my students the knowledge they needed to exhibit their talents.

The day when I got there I could see the spark in those little kids’ eyes. They were so enthusiastic to learn that it encouraged me to do my work with determination and be committed towards it. I was told to teach Hindi, English,Math and drawing. I thought that the activity really taught me many things and those kids too. I got an experience of a thing which I had never done before. While the journey of teaching I developed a bond with those children and Hence, I feel that this activity meant a lot to me. I learned how to tackle different situations such as if the student did not want to study I had to bring up some spontaneous activity. However, there were many problem which I faced during my teaching journey such as: language problem, the language in which they conversed was Gujarati and I had no experience of learning that language. Eventually I heard other teachers speaking in Gujarati and learned the language in bits and pieces, I was glad. There were many people who donated things which the children would need. Some also celebrated events with them and some took them to movies. I enjoyed a lot in this CAS activity though it was a bit tiring as my schedule became very hectic. I had to come from school and rush to this school but in the end it was worth an experience.

I identified my strengths which were creativity and the urge to help those in need which led me to work with these children and develop the areas which still needed growth such as communication skills, persuasive skills, patience etc. I realised that I was not alone there I had to collaborate with other teachers as well who were more qualified and experienced than me but working together helped me gain confidence and motivated me to be like them. I always wanted to work on an issue which was and is impacting not only a single area but the whole world however, I had to first start small. By doing this I realised that it is not that easy for a layman to provide a service like this. It needs a whole lot of determination and commitment towards the job. And I was very determined while doing this activity as I used to be exhausted however, I never took a leave unless there was an important reason.

Overall I was satisfied with how I worked for those 2 month. I was able to use my knowledge and help others which was the main objective of this activity.

 

 

The plantation trip!

This activity not only taught me how to plant trees or help others, it also made me realise that we should stop cutting trees or harming the environment as a treDSC_1050e/plant is one of the most important parts of our life… And so to start small I volunteered to engage myself to work for an issue which has a global significance and to give a helping hand to the workers who are not only helping themselves by planting but also helping us indirectly. We began our journey on 18 July 2015. It was basically a one day trip however, I felt like I had done work which is done in 2 days. It was really very exhausting, as after coming back home, my body ached badly. But I felt proud that I had done something good for the environment and for the people.

It is my strength that I can put all that it takes to help those in need and that’s what helped me develop my areas of growth. I lack in stamina and endurance which was a major drawback which I faced. However working and planting trees not only taught me how to plant but also made me realise that I donDSC_1036‘t have a lot of stamina as there were times when we had to take plants from a certain area and put them where they had to be planted. Walking with the heavy weight of the plants was not easy as the distance was long. The body ache next day made me realize how my body was not that fit to be able to adapt to such conditions.

We worked almost for 4 hours which included watering the plants, placing them on the places allotted, cutting the pDSC_1043lastic from the plant before placing them in the pit. During these 4 hours I was very determined as I wanted to do everything it takes for the betterment of this area. We humans have been so brutal and greedy that we harm the things which keep us alive. It was a challenge for me as I was never used to such exhausting activities the humid climate made it much more difficult for us to work. However, there were times when the workload was divided among the group members which we worked collaboratively. This helped us regain our energy to some extent and help others do as well.

Overall I think it was a great learning experience DSC_0945for me as I could give my services to the workers and in return learn some new skills. I think I enjoyed a lot during this trip and working together with my friends and the workers, it just made work easier and fun! And we could do something for the nature and the environment as well.

Activity 7: Surat Ultimate Open | Service, Activity

Volunteering as a venue coordinator for the SUO was an experience that tested my patience, and resilience unlike anything else.

First and foremost, I had to help organize an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament, a sport that I am absolutely clueless about. I therefore had to learn new terminology, rules and procedures pertinent to the sport. This was challenging as Ultimate Frisbee is a sport unlike any other and a lot of the concepts such as spirit and soft caps/ hard caps are totally alien to people outside the Frisbee world. Apart from the theory of ultimate, I also tried out the sport practically, which turned out to be more difficult than it looks!

Spending all day in the sun at KG farm was also no easy feat and working and developing a friendship with the people around me definitely helped. From erecting umbrellas to devising innovative strategies to keep the sun out of our eyes, I think I worked well with the people around me to make sure that everyone was comfortable. We all also devised a system of alternating turns to make sure that no one person had to do all the work. Ask anyone you want, the team at KG farms turned out to be the most successful because of our synergy! 😀

I also interacted with the players who had come for this tournament from all over the country and the world. This not only helped me pass the time, but it also helped me understand the lives of people who have dedicated themselves to sport and social work, which was really inspiring.

Ethical was another noteworthy aspect of this event. The sport Ultimate Frisbee is centered around being ethical and displaying sportsman spirit and as a venue coordinator, it was my job to make sure that teams and players followed the spirit of the event to the T. I therefore did my best to ensure that all matches were, without fail, followed by the customary ‘Spirit Circle’ and that all teams filled out ‘Spirit Sheets’. In one of the matches, the teams had a disagreement on-field and so I forced them to do a ‘Spirit Circle’ which seemed to alleviate some of the animosity between them. All of this had two lasting impacts: firstly, it enlightened me as to why people like this sport so much (because it’s all about the spirit) and secondly, that I can use lessons about ethics learnt here in other the sports that I play and practice.

So overall, SUO was a pretty enlightening experience and quite different from my usual CAS activities that involve me sitting in an air-conditioned room in fancy clothes *coughs* MUNs *coughs*

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SGFI State level Skating Tournament- Under 19.

My coach of Skating had been encouraging me and trained me to improve my stamina and strength in Skating. The competition required me to have a lot of strength and stamina for the long race (1 km), Short race (500 m), Time trial (300 m) and Road race (4 km to 5 km). I was slow compared to the average time required for a Time Trial race and short race. I had 3 months to the competition and in the 3 months, I had to prepare a lot. I started preparation by increasing my time for jogging, increased counts of lower body exercises and started doing squats which helped me in maintaining my position while skating. I started my preparation in June as the competition was in September. In  First 2 months it was difficult for me because I wasn’t used to doing much lower body exercises and because of difficulties I had soreness in my Inner thighs and hamstring muscles.

I attended morning Skating camps for extra training and due to that I faced two challenges:

1- Disturbed routine, because my school timing was at 9 in the morning but because of morning camps I had to come to school at 7:30 AM.

2- Muscular pain/soreness, because I had to train myself a lot in less time.

I had to continue my training a till the end of the competition because Skating requires a lot of training and I would have faced a lot of issues in competition if I had left in between because my training would have been disturbed so it would have affected my strength and routine (Skating routine of camps).

I won at the District level and then had to compete players from other cities(Of Gujarat) in State level competition. The state level competition was held in Baroda (Vadodara). State level was just 1 month at the district level and I had first term exams just 3 days after the State level competition. I faced some challenges which are:
1- Disturbed study routine: I had my exams just 3 days after the state level competition.

2- Disturbed routine of training, I couldn’t train myself a lot because it rained a lot in between due to which skating rinks got wet and eventually led to the disturbed routine for skating.

I couldn’t race in State level competition because the races of Junior (U-11 and U-14) started at 3 PM and went on till 9:30 PM and after Juniors race it was turn of Middle aged (U-16) which started at 10 PM and got finished at 12:30 AM and after that no races were done because the rink had to be closed as it was late night. The race for Seniors (U-19) was postponed to 31st October and I couldn’t attend the competition of 31st because I had exams

 

 

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The event of smiles – Bal mela

Bal Mela for 2015-16 was scheduled on Saturday, 13th February 2016.

For this event, we invite  underprivileged children each year from all walks of life and community to celebrate and enjoy different sports, art and games.This  event is an opportunity for us to provide space and resources for underprivileged children to enjoy the joys of childhood.

This event has been growing up with me since a few years now , and each year has been actively participating in the event as a volunteer, but this year when the school gave us an opportunity to coordinate the event and make it our baby , I was thrilled , but it getting the opportunity was not that easy.We had to go through a selection process (interviews). I was lucky enough to get selected along with 2 other friends.

To start off with we first went through previous documents of the event , to see how we could plan the event , and also determine the changes we needed to make  . After look at which we made a list of activities that we could conduct for the children , for this, we also asked for the opinion of our classmates so that we could come up with number of activities and make them as creative as possible so that they are fun and engaging for the children

The second step was to get volunteers, so that we have more innovative ways of getting the activity done and that we could arrange for resources and volunteers. Hence, we invited other students to collaborate with us and help us conduct the  event.In order to do so, we sent out google forms to the MY/DP students as well as the school staff. We decided to divide duties  amongst students and teachers in order to have a smooth functioning. We also divided activities into different departments and appointed department heads , which ensured that all works happen simultaneously and within the stipulated time.This is one area where ethics played a role as we had to ensure that our personal biases don’t affect the job distribution process and that roles are divided purely based on one’s potential .

However even when we had planned well in time and divided duties we faced crises one week prior to the event because many volunteers backed off and were no more willing to participate and we could not risk our event and hence we needed more volunteers which we then arranged for .

execution :

One the day of the event I had gone to school early with the support staff in order to check whether everything was well in place and all resources were there in spite  of the fact that I had checked all resource baskets a day prior to then event because I did not want to take any risk  with the event

Everything went on well but on the day of the event  many volunteers did not turn up , and hence we decide to cancel a few activities as we did not want to sacrifice on the quality of the event.Also, few activities were out of resources so I had to arrange for more resources  Also in one activity that is flex banner , we released that the flex banner was too small for so many children so then we had to arrange  for new flex to let them work on it and enjoy the activity. I also did interviews with students , teachers , and volunteers this were I had to ensure that I did no hurt anyone’s sentiments

The other ethical implications that we had to keep in mind were the quality of food, quality of activities , making sure that sentiments of students were no hurt  , and that each student got equal opportunities to enjoy the event. 

The event taught me that how simple things can lead to great smiles . Overall, i think it was a well organised and successful event.

What I take back from the event is that  Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own action .  witnessing  the  faces of 1456 children light up with joy and ecstasy which gave our event a reason for contentment. Happiness never decreases by being shared, said Buddha and this day proved the words of buddha true for me . Here is a glimpse from the day of smiles.

 

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