Grandparents' Delight

Most can only dream of visiting Hawaii, may be once in a lifetime. It is a veritable paradise on earth. The lushness and serenity of Nature just possesses you! Our family has been singularly lucky, as my Dad was a regular visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu since 1950. Later my parents settled down in Hawaii and my siblings also grew up there. Today, by sheer happenstance our son, Sumeet - an environmental scientist, works at the East West Center, Honolulu and daughter-in-law, Saguna is a researcher in Retrovirology at the U.of H. Their two children, Sarini and Samartha study at the Noelani Elementary School, nestled in the verdant Manoa Valley. 'Noelani' in Hawaiian means 'Heavenly Mist'. While Sarini is very meticulous and thinks through, before doing anything, brother Samartha, is impetuous and everything about him is unpredictable! His responses even to the most commonplace things are always 'off the track'. He is likely to take the 'Road Less Traveled'! This shows up as originality in every task and school project given to him.

Recently, we were delighted to read the Graduation Speech, which Sarini gave at the school. We are so happy that the children at Noelani are being given, at this early age an exposure by way of trips and projects (even Robotics!), a privilege I never had. It is my pleasure in sharing with you,
Sarini's Graduation Speech

"Whoa! I can't believe that I am graduating today! It has been a long time at Noelani and I don't think that I am ready to graduate from Noelani yet. I will miss everything about this school. This school had become a part of my life since last 6 years and I spent more active hours here than at home. I think that Noelani is the best school in Hawaii. I loved all the teachers and the years here but I think the fifth grade was the best year of all.......

Our teachers were Ms. Chang, Ms. Yoshimasu and Mr. Higa. They are all very talented, full of humor and made sure that learning was fun for us. Since I was always a bit shy, I am particularly thankful to all of them to encourage me come out of my shell.

We did so so....many activities this year and had so... much fun that I am really in a dilemma as to where to begin and how to end......We had so many filed trips this year that it was really overwhelming. You won't believe, but by the time we would recover from one field trip, we received another pink, field trip form- as an indicator of yet one more round of exciting time. We went to places such as art workshop in Academy of Arts, Turtle Bay Resort, Camp Erdman, Colonial Fair, Solar Car meet, DARE day, and Ice Palace. I will like to share some of my memorable moments in these trips.

At turtle bay resort, we had lots of fun swimming in the pool, going down the slides and canoeing at the Kualua regional park. Playing various games at Camp Erdman was mainly to teach us working together as a team, in which we did a good job and impressed our teachers. At the banquet dinner, we learned etiquettes that sure will help us in the future. Staying overnight at the hotel provided us an opportunity to bond with friends and to learn a very important social skill of adjusting with other people.

Colonial Fair was a great learning experience for us, to understand the life style of early colonists and how they settled in America. At the fair, I was the baker and I remember- how our booth was one of the busiest booths. We worked hard on this project and with the help of our teachers, this fair was really SUCCESSFUL.

Solar Car meet was one thing that we were all looking forward to because it taught us physics and math. The real challenge for us was to ensure that every single detail was covered and our solar car would run good on solar cells. Most of our cars did a pretty good job. We felt proud engineers in training.

Wheneve,r I see any teenager smoking, I think how fortunate we were to get trained by the DARE organization. DARE stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. It teaches us about making good and wise choices in life, specially related to drugs and smoking and how to avoid peer pressure. Considering the increase in teenagers using drugs, I think it is a very valuable training for us at the right time. We are proud to be DARE graduates.

ICE PALACE was all FUN AND ONLY FUN. What more can I say. Everybody, including good skaters and skaters in training enjoyed inside the ring. It was again a good place to make merry, bond with friends and treasure happy memories of last few days at this school.

Overall, the whole school's environment is very congenial that always motivates students. The school's focus has always been on Be respectful, Be safe and Be responsible and therefore I think we are ready to face tough challenges of the middle school. I would like to thank everyone here for making my time in Noelani a really memorable one. I will always cherish these experiences. "