The birthday party, by Callum

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They waited until I was back from school to decorate the party room because I was sad if I was going to miss it. Narabdaji helped us get ready for the lotto draw at Avatarpuri’s birthday. We got some papers and wrote numbers up to 96. We made some tickets (I drew a picture but Mum can't work out how to cut and paste it into this blog for you to see, so I'll have to tell you about it) , like with square pieces of paper that was scrunched like wrapping a toffee. It had curls in the middle and sharp points at the ends of it.

Then Avatarpuri went to his room and got lots of things to give away for lotto prizes. Like flavoured milk straws (Sip-Ahhhs), Pez, Krishna statues, wind up toys, photo frames, very precious rocks, singing bowls and some of Avatarpuri’s paintings.

They gave all the money from the lotto draw to Avatarpuri and me because we are raising money for our Ashram Hospital. I want to the money for a car for the hospital. We raised a lot of money in the lotto, 10 000 Rupees! I got the cheque at the party! So far I’ve got about 1 and a half lakhs for the car but I need about 7 and a half more lakhs. If you want, you can have a healthy morning tea to help me raise some money for it. Or maybe you can sell a couple of things you don’t need. I sold some stickers here and collected a bit more money too doing that.

Avatarpuri got lots of fun presents. I gave him a money box that I painted. He even gave us a present! He gave Aiden some Rajasthani shoes with the pointy toe and gave me Callum a scalf, a beanie and sweatband. It’s orange, one of my favourite colours. Samadhiji cooked awesome food for the party and the whole week she was here, we got delicious things.

Then we went outside for the balloons. It was a big white balloon, very, very big. At the bottom there was some wood. You had to get some matches or a lighter and then you had to light every corner of four ends of the wood at the very bottom of the balloon. And then, two people holded the top and blowed and then when it was full of air, they let go. We all got to put a wish into one of the balloons just before it took off. When the balloon hits the ozone layer, the wish comes down to Earth.

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