Beyond academics

Our morning started with the sports session with Mr. Brown. We did some warm up exercises and then played a variety of  games with the students of grade 8. We had a lot of fun while playing team games like passing the ball, dodge, basket ball as well as tricky mind games. The second was a games' session where we played formal   school games like cricket and badminton with the 10th graders. The  mixed doubles  matches  which we played with our local buddies were invigorating.  It was really interesting to get acquainted with students of the same age. We had an Art class with Ms. Giblin in sessions 3 and 4. We began with  some wood art for which we took inspiration from parts of trees like branches, leaves, flowers and the bark, to create paintings using different coloured inks with thin wooden sticks and unique pointed wooden brushes. This was followed by 2 different art activities. In the  first one,  we were required to use our imagination and create a creature in 3 different parts. We had to start by diving the paper into 3 different parts and drawing a face on the topmost division. We passed this on  randomly and the next person would draw the body to the face and so on.  The influence anime characters, emojis, robots, aliens and even some cartoon characters  was obvious in the faces. They also drew various types of bodies and legs like - mermaid, fish, crane, cow, tiger, alien, robot, human and even the eight legged octopus. The drawings at the end turned out to be really unique and funny. The last art activity we did aimed at recreating our first painting where we had used wood. We were provided with all sorts of art materials and we were asked to be creative and do whatever we wanted to to make our painting more beguiling. After a very colourful and sporty day, we headed towards our final university visit of the day, to the  'University of Queensland'. We were warmly welcomed by their faculty and one of the indian students who was called to make the visit more comfortable. First we attended a presentation based on the university, it's history and the courses available there, creditably presented by 2of their faculty members belonging to Science and Business departments. This presentation helped the students to get a clear idea of the choices available in the field they are interested in and how they can further pursue them to make a  successful career. The campus tour revealed astoundingly beautiful sandstones which were used to construct the buildings of the university. I  returned to the hotel with a feeling of   satisfaction at a day well spent.

Arya Shukla
10th K
DPS, Bopal