Those parents who attended our Open Day celebration at the end of last term may remember the encouraging speech given by His Grace Sesa Prabhu, the ISKCON Minister for Education.
 

Yesterday we attended the Gaura Purnima program here in Mayapur, and it just confirms to me more and more the incredible opportunity we have to perform devotional service here in Mayapur.

On the last wednesday of the annual GBC meetings, a number of our year 7 and 8 boys visited the GBC body meeting to give a recitation of the Jaganathastakam that they had been learning in sloka class. The boys were very warmly received by the GBCs, who really appreciated their performance and their obvious sincerity.

Well done boys! We were all very proud of your performance.

On the last day of term we held the Open Day in the grounds of the school. Many prospective parents came to see the school in action, and we heard many positive comments about the school from parents who were checking out the options for education in Mayapur.

This week we had the great news that Prahlad das, one of our year 11 students, had topped the whole of Inida for IGCSE Cambridge physics. This is a great achievement considering that there are more than 200 schools in India which are running the Cambridge International Examinations program.
 
Well done Prahlad! We look forward to more great results from students in the coming examinations this May.

Just yesterday I visited one of our teachers at 6 o'clock in the evening to discuss some school matters, and found that one of her students and his mother were at the teacher's house doing practice writing for English letters.
 

SMIS will be holding a historic 24 hour kirtan this friday, on the occasion of Sri Adwaita Acharyas Appearance Day.
 
As Adwaita Acharya called for the appearance of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, we will call out for the presence of the Lord to bless us with His mercy so that we may all co-operatively make progress in our spiritual life to the ultimate goal of service to Lord Caitanya and Sri Sri Radha Madhava in the spiritual world.
 

This Friday, January 15th, will see a total eclipse of the sun in Mayapur.

This is a major eclipse, with astrologers predicting the sun will be completely covered for 11 minutes. It is recommended that everyone should stay indoors and not cook or eat from 11.30 until 3.30.

Because of this, it was decided at our teachers meeting that it would be impractical to follow these guidelines, and still open the school, so we have decided to close the school this friday.

Thanks to all parents, teachers and students who made sports day such a success. Everyone had lots of fun, and there was some good competition on the athletics track.

Special thanks to all the parents who made such an outstanding effort to cook prasadam for the stall - the school raised Rs. 10,000 by sales of prasadam, so that was a big success this year!

We are planning to make next year's sports day even better with different houses and more organised events.

Several parents have voiced their concerns about the length of the lunch time at SMIS. Parents whose children eat at home often have difficulty in finishing their lunch and returning their children to school by 2.00pm.