Tihar-Halloween

                     Seasonal flowers of yellow, orange, white, purple, prettily lined up in rows at the rooftop. Dark and cold mornings but pretty hot evenings, full sweater and long stockings for uniform, and hot water bottle.This is exactly how i thought about fall. All our lady party in the house generously started preparing for the festival of lights, shopping for the five-day long festival. Before few weeks and after Dashain, I observed the newly brought flowers which was little bud just ready to turn into pretty flowers. All the flowers used to get plucked for many purposes like decorating the house and making garlands. The kid party used to be under strict command; not to spoil the flowers while playing around.

                        After few months in Germany, during fall, I used to remember celebrating Tihar with my large family and all those precious members with whom I’ve created memories. But all of a sudden my mind stirkes with numerous customs design and decoration for ‘Halloween Theme Party” for school. The entire October month used to last doing paper work and decorations for Halloween and yes, hunting for the costume in the mall. Our entire class works used to based on the monthly theme where I got to learn about most of things through drawing, painting, craftwork and TV shows regarding Halloween and we even baked cookies in the shape of spiders filled with cocoa inside and adding tiny spider legs made of melted marshmello and dark chocolate. The day before Halloween we had the party, where our in-charge, Frau Wllassak and later Frau Hasse and Frau Frietag used to decorate our tables with spooky lamp, scented candle lights, décor cards, and skeletons and with great food where we gathered around the desks which was made into a large dining table. Our classroom also had our art work stuck all around the class board before a week. We all enjoyed pretty much excitingly singing Halloween related song which we learnt in music class with our dreadful and spooky costume and make-up.

                   I was pretty sure every child of my class including me wasn’t a Christian there who merely followed their religion. Even though we were small not knowing what culture variation and ethnicities meant, but it made us realize that there will be no harm if we celebrate every festival and learn about it through interacting, visual, audio and even while baking and decorating inside of our classroom as curriculum.

                  I still struggle to understand about different Gods we worship in our community and the importance of its celebration. Apart from learning about it through text books, the internet and my observation it still is difficult to practice my cultural ways of worshiping and celebrating God. While understanding and learning it was easy to grab things in very short time about many other festivals like Easter Day, Carnival, Good Fridays, as we were allowed to learn about it in several methods and was in the curriculum as well. The coming of any festival and it’s ending taught me about different seasons of Germany, even the seasonal songs which we were graded upon in a subject, Music, had lyrics which was linked for us to understand about anything, like I still remember the farm song, where the lyrics is about the farm house owner and different types of farm animal, another autumn, summer, fall, winter songs which is easy for any child to understand what type of season it is apart from boring long theories which I studied in Nepal’s curriculum that too by learning it by heart just for a sake to get marks for tests and exams. This not only makes the child love education and understand its importance, but it allows a child to educate the way they are most suitable in. This teaching system also made me realize that we all have different ways of understanding; some of us prefer lectures and audio, while others prefer to understand through video clips such as documentaries, colorful clips with songs. Childhood learning is one of the ‘peak’ time in our phase of life, which broadens our mind and allows us to have different perspective about whatever comes in our life as a journey of exploration within ourselves and others. Due to learning flexibility, first world countries are much more ahead of us in terms of politics, economics and even psychologically.

                    I can tell, my three years of schooling in Germany has made me understand many things which has kept me one step ahead than my classmates after returning back to Nepal. The experience is something that will keep me alert and determined in whatever I become and wherever I will stand, I also want my country to have learning styles which won’t make students escape from education system but rather continue them to strive for excellence and not let one paper decide our future.