Farewell!

Back dated post.

Last Friday marked the last day of school year 09, Charlotte's school organized a farewell party for the children and some of us were invited. I didn't plan to attend initially as the party will start at 3.3opm but it was a rather busy workweek for me. However, my laptop started to playing tricks on me around 3.00pm, the virus scan and patch update had required me to restart my machine repeatedly. What made it worst was I had "blue screen" every time I restart my machine. I gave up after the 4th time and I decided to join the farewell party at Charlotte's school instead. It was 3.50pm when I left office.

When I arrived at the school, I saw the children were all wearing balloon hats and gathered at the hall. There were food ready to be served as well and I was told that the children will have performance too! I ran towards my house and grabbed my camera and headed to the school again just in time for the opening.

There were song presentations, with sign language and appreciation token presentation to the volunteers and parents whom contributed to the school, participated in the activities and helped out throughout the year. No discrimination, no playing favorites, everybody gets to participate, give and receive.

I received a token of appreciation too, and a nice warm hug from this boy! (I think he was a bit shy to hug a stranger )

Then it was food! Those were all from the volunteers and parents contributed (I went empty handed, shame on me). Some older kids were asked to help serving, the younger ones gets to eat first. Teachers, parents, and volunteers were all there assisting the children as necessarily without being asked. I was really impressed and pleased to see everyone practise the values that they taught, it was shown in action!

I was just talking to some friends a couple weeks back about what a pity that Charlotte's school don't organize year end concert like all the other kindergartens or daycare centers do. (They don't encourage birthday party at school either) After this event, I found what the school did was rather meaningful, in just a short 1.5hour session, no fancy costumes, no adult make-ups, no additional cost incurred and yet all of us gained some kind of values and learning from that session. Simple, yet successful!

Lastly, the school had a set of "graduation souvenir" for all the 6 years old children. It was all handmade, paperscrap, with pictures and diary inside this box! It was made with heart and love!