Bright and early on Thursday 17th February, Miss Franklin and I embarked on our long journey to Ahmedabad, India, to visit our link school – Nelson’s International.  After 18 hours of travelling and 3 hours sleep we arrived at school early Friday morning.  The school were so welcoming and presented us with beautiful flowers, a huge banner with the Collis lion on it hung outside the school and a wonderfully intricate traditional rangoli pattern.  The children and teachers were all incredibly polite and invited us into all their classes.  We shared the work the Collis children had made for them and the children loved learning all about life in Teddington and London.  As the week went on we experienced so many wonderful Indian traditions in the school.  On Saturday (yes, they go to school 6 days a week!) they all took part in a traditional Garba dance for us and taught us the various dances that they would perform during many festivals and weddings in India.  We ate a vast array of food that the children had prepared with their parents and teachers.  We observed a variety of different lessons across the curriculum and we have learnt a lot of ideas and strategies to try to implement here at Collis.  We were also very lucky to go with the Year 2 and 3 children on a trip to Gandhi’s house.  The children taught us so much about the important history Gandhi was involved with in Ahmedabad, which they are rightly very proud of, and we ended our trip having lunch with some monkeys!

On the final day at Nelson’s International school, we prepared a traditional ‘British Tea’ for the children and staff to say a huge thank you to them all. We made 160 shortbread and cucumber sandwiches (with no crusts!) and they all had a cup of ‘English’ tea.  It was a fabulous and very successful trip which has fully established the link between our two schools and we are already putting a few more projects into motion.  We are really looking forward to two of Nelson’s teachers coming over to visit Collis in June as part of the reciprocal visit.

Miss Franklin and Miss Browning