Children

Have a successful year

Hi Children,

We welcome a New Year. This means more responsibility for all of you, as you progress in life.

A New Year puts you in a new class. You have now progressed to a higher grade in school. You may have new class friends and teachers this year. Dear children, year 2012 is bound to bring you more challenges than last year.

You are one year older and will have to work harder specially with your school work.

I am sure you are ready to do more homework.

The harder you work the better results you will get. Haven't you heard of the old saying 'Hardwork always pays off'.

So children make it a New Year resolution to study harder and do extra homework. Make it a habit to work to time and to a plan.

Bye for now.

Aunt Anji

Dinushi finds a friend

Aditha DISSANAYAKE

Something exciting happened during this year's December holidays; something Dinushi had not dreamt of in her wildest daydreams. Dinushi made a new friend with the help of an old bottle, a piece of paper and the 'River K'.

Every year Dinushi spends her school holidays with her grandma and Aunty Mala in the house her great grandfather built in Unawatuna, over a hundred years ago. This was the house where her father and her five uncles and aunts had lived till they had all got married and moved away leaving Aunty Mala and Grandma in the big house, with its sprawling garden of coconut and mango trees. Whenever Dinushi and her older brother Danushka got their school holidays their parents drove them to Unawatuna to spend three out of the four weeks of the holidays with their grandma and Aunty Mala.

Danushka who was 15, spent his time reading or playing chess by himself, and had little time for Dinushi. Left to her own devices, Dinushi who would soon be 11, spent her days playing imaginary games with her doll Rosemary and, grandma's faithful Dalmatian, Patch. Even though Dinushi wanted Aunty Mala's tomcat Bushy to join them, he was too lazy to do so, but kept a wary eye on their movements from his post on the windowsill. It was clear that Bushy thought something was clearly not right with everyone who did not wish to have a snooze in the morning sunlight, the way he did after his heavy breakfast of salmon and bread.

On most mornings Dinushi, Rosemary and Patch went on imaginary trips walking through the garden, overcoming the wolfs who glared at them from behind the bushes of marigolds and the monkeys who tried to grab their picnic basket. Patch seemed to understand every word Dinushi said and stopped to listen whenever Dinushi kept her finger to her lips and said "shhhh there is a monkey on the mango tree". Patch would stop, look up and bark as if to say "keep off".

On most days, they pretended they reached the last stop of their journey when they reached the river which flowed at the bottom of grandma's garden. Dinushi called it the River K because her father had once explained to her it might be a branch of the Koggala Oya. Dinushi sat on the river bank and threw the fallen leaves of the Erabadu tree nearby, into the flowing water. She watched the leaves twirl gracefully like ballet dancers as the water flowed, searching for the sea. "All rivers finally meet the sea", she remembered her father telling her on one of their previous visits.

As she watched the water, Dinushi wished she had a real friend to play with. She wished she had cousins of her own age the way George had in the Famous Five books, the way Upali Giniwalle had in Madol Duwa. She sighed thinking of the adventures she could have had if only she had a real friend.

Today as she watched the water flowing past her she saw a plastic bottle float by. She wondered where the bottle had come from and where it was going. Would it travel to distant lands like the Antarctic? Would it finally sink? Would someone pick it up? Suddenly Dinushi realized here was a way to find a friend. If she wrote her name and address on a piece of paper, placed it inside an old bottle and threw it into the river whoever found the bottle would become her friend. Danushka, as usual, was certain Dinushi's idea would not work. He was sure the bottle would not float as far as India, let alone Australia, the way Dinushi hoped it would. "The bottle is sure to sink. A shark might swallow it or it might crash into a rock and break into pieces" said Danushka.

Dinushi did not listen to her brother. She found an old Marmite bottle on the shelves in her grandma's kitchen, a bit sooty because her grandma still used a hearth to prepare their meals, but with the yellow lid still intact. She wrote her name and address on a piece of paper, folded it into four, placed it inside the bottle, closed the lid as tight as she could and, standing on the bank of the river, threw it into the middle of the flowing water. As she watched the bottle float down the river she kept saying "Dear river, please find me a friend."

From then on she stayed near the front gate of her grandma's house every morning and waited for the postman. "Is it your Birthday? Are you waiting for birthday cards?" asked Uncle Sarath, the postman, on the third day. "No" said Dinushi. " I am waiting for a letter from a friend". "Ah, don't worry. It will come tomorrow", said the kind Postman.

When their parents came to take Dinushi and Danushka back to Colombo a week before school was to reopen, Dinushi waved good bye to Aunty Mala and Grandma with tears in her eyes. She was specially sad because there had been no letter for her even though she had waited for the postman every morning for one week. She felt the river and the bottle had let her down.

She was wrong. Yesterday when she returned home from the bookshop with the new books for the new school year she found a letter from Aunty Mala, waiting for her. She opened the letter and saw a note from Aunty Mala and another envelope addressed to her. "This came for you two days after you left" wrote Aunty Mala. When Dinushi opened the second envelop she found a letter for her from a girl called Thanuri. Thanuri, who had come on a trip to Valle Devale, (the beach near Dinushi's grandma's house)had picked up the bottle floating in the water. She was happy to find Dinushi's address inside the bottle.

"My father is a farmer and we live in Akurassa. I will post this letter when we go to the market on Sunday" wrote Thanuri. She also wrote she had one elder brother and a younger sister and that she is twelve years old. "Will you be my friend?", she asked at the end of the letter.

Dinushi's parents were not too pleased when they heard about the message Dinushi had sent in the bottle. They advised her not to do it again because the bottle might have been found by someone who might have harmed Dinushi. After her parents explained to her the dangers of giving away her name and address to strangers and the harmful environmental effects of throwing bottles into rivers, Dinushi made up her mind never to do anything like what she had done, ever again. She was happy when her parents said she could send a reply to Thanuri. Thanuri too seemed to be lonely and in need of a friend. That night Dinushi wrote a reply to her new found friend. She sealed the envelop with a smile on her face. She hoped Thanuri would soon become her best friend.

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Design	New Year celebrations	Postman	Fruits
F. Zahra Zulfikar Ali 8B Sailan International School Negombo	Damien John Jayatilaka 6E2, St. Peter’s College Colombo 4	Savindu Shanikka Grade 8 Sailan International School Negombo	Narmada Grade 1, Kingston College International, Wellawatte