Raindrops Aug2010

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    Cover art bySanchana Srikanth

    [email protected]

    Cloud : 4 Drop : 3

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    Conens

    1. From he Ediors desk 3

    2. A sory feaure... 43. Limericks Lyrics 6

    4. Peters diary 7

    5. Travelogue 10

    6. Grandpa Tidbis Blog 12

    7. Crafys Corner 14

    8. Giggles and his Rainfores friends 159. Inroducion o he supernaural.... 16

    10. Grandmas book review 18

    11. Passparous Page 20

    12. Naure Journal 22

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    Hi all,

    ime for another issue of Raindrops! Same challenges and time dead-lines and at the end of it all, another issue that makes us forget that just

    a few days ago we really quit in despair! When we have a dream in ourhearts, guess it is very difficult to get rid of it :) alking of which, wecame across this interesting web-site www.onemilliongiraffes.com. Asthe owner of the site - Ola Helland says...

    o my good friend Jrgen I said a sentence that changed my life. Wewere discussing the internet and how amazing it is, when I said: Tere

    really are no limits anymore. Anything is possible! I could easily collectone million giraffes if I wanted to. I wasnt really thinking about whatI was saying and Jrgen wouldnt let that sentence go. He refused to be-lieve it was possible to collect that many giraffes, so we made a bet. So that is what the site is about? A response to a bet! But wait...you can-not send in just about any giraffe. It cannot be store-bought or made ona computer. Guess what? He is pretty close to realising his target! ake alook at the web-site to see the amazing collection of giraffes that people

    from all over the world have sent in. Highly inspirational! With thatthought we leave you to explore the rest of this issue...

    Warmly,Te Raindrops eam

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    The Adventures of the Zamar Family

    Introduction:Before we start this story, youll need to know a bitof astronomy to understand it properly.

    Here we go: You know that we live in the Milky Way galaxy. Outthere in space is another galaxy called Andromeda. You can travelto it, but it would take humans about a million years, so it is basi-cally impossible. However, Andromeda is heading straight for the

    Milky Way and in about 5 billion years (when the sun and the Earthhave exploded) they will crash together. Now, this ctional storyis in the future, when humans are extinct and Andromeda has cometogether with the Milky Way. You shall learn more as you read.Have fun!

    Far into the future, the new galaxy called Milkmeda has formed.The Elinix race have evolved and taken over the planet Oceano, on

    which lived the Zamar family: Mammix, Pappix, and the twins Za-pow and Zeggy. Their purple bodies are shaped like eggs and theyhave yellow antennae and spots. Right now it was dinnertime for thefamily.Im hungry, said Zeggy. Im almost nished cooking, Pap-pix told her.

    Soon, they all began to slurp their rock soup down and n-ished up with mud pie for dessert.

    by Rithana Srikanth

    A story feature...

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    Im tired of eating the same thing every day, Zapow groaned.This life is boring! I also want something different, said Mam-mix. Well, lets go for a y, Pappix said. Everyone agreed and sothey ew.

    On the way, Zapow spotted something shiny on the ground. He ewdown to see what it was. What have you found? called Pappix. Idont know, said Zapow. The whole family crowded around him. Itlooked like a metal box with some round buttons on it. There waseven a door to go in. The Zamars all went through the door. Littledid they know that this box was actually a time machine that can gobillions of years back in time! Zapow started pressing some buttonsand suddenly all of them were pulled away by some unknown force!

    Whats happening? cried Zeggy as they felt sucked into ablack hole. It was so scary that Zapow started howling loudly.

    Suddenly, the metal box landed with a thud on the ground. Slowly,Pappix opened the door cautiously and peeked outside. It was sobright with light that he couldnt even open his eyes! Oceano was

    always dark and so he didnt even know about sun light. He rubbedhis eyes many times and nally, saw the world around them.

    It was a beautiful grassy garden, with rose owers, white lilies andsunowers. Butteries oated above the plants and the bees werehumming noisily around them. The Zamar family gazed wonderinglyaround trying to make sense of what kind of a place this would be.They had never seen such a sight before.

    To be continued...

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    The birds are lazily cheepingInto burrows animals are creepingAs day merges into nightI watch the last rays of light,And I thinkWill the Sun rise tomorrow?Bringing joy to sorrowOr will we be dead by then,You can never tell with us men.As coolness takes over warmthDarkness takes over light.For with every good there will be harmImpending our sight.But far from the rat-raceIn a lonely minaret of a mosqueI see the sunsets glimmering face,And as night comes, I descend the stairs,Feeling satisfied.

    By Abu Bakr Jamal

    Limericks LyricsMINARET MEMORIES OF A SUNSET

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    My Gallopic pet !

    My pet is a horse called Dollar.Most people would say that a horse is avery unusual pet and would not make agood pet at all .But, they are wrong. Well , not fully wrong,but partly wrong and partly correct. Because, a horse is anunusual pet, but it is an unusual pet for someone who doesntride horses. But, for a rider, it is a

    very common pet, as mostaccomplished polo anddressage riders havetheir own horses, asthey use them quitea lot.

    Polo horses are rid-den quite often. Itis true that a round

    in a polo matchcalled a chakka

    lasts only seven and ahalf minutes, but in those

    seven and a half minutes, the

    horses do as much work as they would have done for sevenand a half hours [ Okay not seven and a half hours, I was justkidding. But they sure do work hard!] . Dressage is anothertype of equinine sport where the horse has to be ridden in avery precise manner. Training your horse for dressage makesthe horse work hard too!

    Therefore horses which compete in sports have to be verywell fed and kept with great care. And if they have a slightinjury such as a slight limp in the front leg, they will no lon-

    Petters diary

    By Devanshika Bajpai

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    ger be t for competitions. So, they are bought by ridingschools and they are then used to teach people riding. Okay,its not sad. But dont go straight to the animal rights of-cer and complain that they are not kept as properly as they

    were at the polo stables ! They aremuch more well kept and fedby the children who comethere!! They always givethe horses carrots andare good with them. Thisis what happened toDollar. Anyway enoughabout polo and itshorses, we must talkabout Dollar, whomthis is about.

    Dollar is a bay [ bay isa dark brown, almost

    black color], and has awhite star on his fore-head and one white sock.He was a polo horse untilhe came to Red Earth,- the place where he livesnow. I was very excited when

    I heard that he was arrivingfrom Bangalore, as he had comefrom Jaipur to Mumbai, from Mumbaito Bangalore, and then he came here. Histransportation took almost a month. He is nowbeing trained , as the rules of polo are different from thedressage rules. Dollar is a very tall horse, in fact he is one of

    the tallest horses in Red Earth. He is a very gentle and quiethorse, and he loves eating carrots. I always give him carrotswhen I visit him. Sometimes he turns his head and stands in

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    his stall, trying to poke his nose into the next horses stall.When he does this and I want to feed him carrots, I call hisname and tap on the stall door. He always turns around andpokes his head out and looks at me as if he is saying: Hey!

    I thought you got carrots for me! and sniffs me to see if Ihave his carrots. When he smells them, he lowers his head tomy height,[ I cant reach and give him carrots if he doesntlower his head, hes too tall] and I make my hand at and bal-ance the carrot on my hand [ balancing is necessary or elseit will fall on the sandy ground below, and horses dont likeeating sandy carrots and if I hold it with my ngers he mightmistake my nger for the carrot and chomp them up], and heeats it. He also has a long tail which he swishes to keep awayies, but when someone is grooming him [me, for instance ],he thinks the brush is a y and swishes his tail, and it hitsthe persons face [and his tail can hurt!]. That is why we mustalways wear a helmet, even while brushing a horse. Somehorses kick too, but luckily Dollar doesnt. Thats why I nevergo behind a horse so he cant kick you as horses mostly kick

    only with back legs, because they cant see whos behind them.Dollar is too high for me to reach all the way up and groomhim on his back, so the stable hands do that.

    He is ridden everyday by the stable hands, and is fed well,too.[ he gets a lot of hay, and I give him a lot of carrots, allthe horses around him look into his stall jealously while I give

    Dollar carrots, as they are not given carrots very often.] Ialso give some carrots to the pony I ride, but luckily Dollaris too far away from the pony too see, because he might beangry with me for giving carrots to another horse!, I also givecarrots to the baby horse next to dollar and also to a horsecalled Magic but they are Dollars friends, so Dollar doesntmind. Dollar is a wonderful horse and he is the best pet I

    could have.

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    Travelogue

    We just returned from a 3 week long trip in Sikkim. Wewent by train from Bangalore to Chennai, Chennai to Calcut-ta and from there to New Jalpaigudi. From there we wentby car to a place called Pelling in West Sikkim.We stayed

    there for one day. our big trek was a few days later from aplace called Yuksom. it took six days to go and come back.we trekked to the base camp of Mt. Kanchenjunga. it is aplace called Dzongri and is at 14,000 ft. the trek was nottoo difcult though some parts were really steep. we hadsome yaks and ponies to carry our stuff. it is quite a populartrek so we passed a lot of other people and we had to keepmaking way for the other yaks and ponies. But we had great

    views of the mountains and it even snowed! the whole tripwas a wonderful experience and I really enjoyed myself.

    Snapshots of Sikkim

    Text and photographs by Aditi Elassery

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    On the way to Pelling from therailway station

    There were a lot of other trekkersso with so many people and theiryaks and all there was quite a trafc

    jam sometimes!

    Mt. khagchendzonga

    At home in the mountains

    Sacred lakes have a Prayerags all around them

    On our way

    We crossed many riverswhile trekking. This is oneof them...

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    Grandpa Tidbits Blog

    Last Sunday my grand-daughter (Eesha)and I were looking at some pictures of ourcoastal town taken about fty odd yearsago. What broad streets! What strangecostumes! Grandpa look - Hand-carts! Howcute! And what a beatuiful beach! Eeshakept exclaiming as she looked at each of thephotographs in turn. Suddenly she stopped and asked me, Grandpa,when did we ever have such a wide beach?. I looked at the photgraphthat she was holding up. With sparkling waters, waves lapping onto a

    clean beach and a lighthouse in the background, it looked like it wasstraight out of an artists canvas! A far cry from the beach that isthere now. There is no sand left on what we still call the beach. Rockshave been brought in and piled high to barricade the town in the eventof another tsunami, causing severe erosion of beaches further out onthe coastline. The adventerous still clamber over the rocks to get tothe water and splash and... litter! Suddenly I felt very sad! Within amatter of about 50 years, a beautiful coastline has become a ravaged

    landscape! What Eeshas mother and I enjoyed for years is now notavailable to Eesha. Who is to blame?

    The sea is supposed to be the mother of all living creatures. Mosttheories of evolution claim that life particles rst appeared in thesea, going on to develop into marine and land creatures witth an in-termediate phase - amphibians. The seas have been around for ages,shaping our landscape and our destinies. Beaches are the connectinglinks between our evolutionary past and our emotional present. It isa place of tranquility where people of different ages feel at home. Ithas been a source of creative expression for many a poet and artist.As for children, the beach is a place they can complete identify with -for it is here that all the elements of nature come forth to play withthem.

    There is no doubt that we need to do something urgent to save ourbeaches. Where do we start? While adults talk about global warming

    and soil erosion and rise in sea-levels, one thing you can do, as children,is to increase awareness to keep our remaining beaches clean. Litteringis one of the major causes of pollution of our seas.

    Reach out to the beach

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    NAMEPA(North Ameri-can Marine Envi-

    ronment ProtectionAssociation) isa voluntary,non-prot andnon-governmen-tal organizationcommittedto preserving

    the marineenvironmentthrough educatingseafarers, port commu-nities and children aboutthe need, and strate-gies, for protectingthis important globalresource. On the

    right, you see a posterthat NAMEPA has kindly allowedus to share with our Raindrops friends.A picture that speaks more loudly thanwords.So go ahead, plan and organizewith your friends and get down tosome action to Save our seas andour beaches! And while you are do-

    ing it, you can practice this tongue-twister She sells sea shells on thesea-shore at Seychelles. The shells thatshe sells at Seychelles are sea-shore shells.

    Oops, just typing this is getting my brain tangled.Good luck kids!

    Afy,Grandpa SrinivasanPondicherry, India.

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    Crafty's Corner

    I was looking for a

    nice project tofeature in thisissue of Rain-

    drops andcame acrossthis one. This is different from theother craft-projects that we have

    featured in the past because we are

    not going to give you instructions forthis one. Look at the pictures and you willsee why. We felt so inspired by Srikants creations that we willlet the pictures do the talking! We hope this inspires you totake a look at ordinary things around you in a different light.Thank you so much Srikant, Aditi and Dinkar for sharing yourcreations with Raindrops.Creatively,

    Crafty

    Srikant says...One day I found a pod from thetulip tree that looked like a rowboat. It looked interesting, soI picked it up and took it home.When I showed it to everybody,

    my brother Dinkar had a brightidea, Lets make ships out ofthese things! I was doubtful, but nev-ertheless I tried it out. First I went out to get some sticks for themasts.Then I cut out some pieces of paper for the sails and stuckit to the masts.After this I stuck the masts to the boat, thenleft it to dry. It looked very good, but I didnt think it would oat.Dinkar and I went to try it out in the swimming pool in our cam-

    pus( Dinkar had also made one ). When we put it on the water andpushed it, it oated beautifully. We pushed it further and startedplaying with it.

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    The Rainforest spread out below them as Albert ew on, and aftera while they left it. Now Albert began to follow the road. Farmsand elds sped by, and nally, they spotted the truck. Albert re-duced his speed and began to dive gracefully downward. Hold ontight! he said. Swooping downward, Albert steadied himself andthey landed shakily on top of the speeding truck. Now what are wesupposed to do?, grunted Nobert. Give you a peck rst, repliedAlbert. Ginger wasnt listening though. She was staring at the hous-es and buildings ashing past, a woman who had a cat in her arms,a dog barking loudly...Rats sped around and a few street cats eyedthem greedily. And still the truck kept going, until nally it came toa stop at a dusty-looking building. Albert (with Ginger and Nobert)quickly took ight again and landed on a nearby pole. But suddenly -

    The journey continues...

    By Eesha Srinivas

    Giggles and his Rainforest friends

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    Introduction to the amazing,supernatural cloud speciesof RainBoogle Island - Part II

    In this issue, we are looking at the Nimbusclouds. If you want to catch a glimpse of thesecute but hot-tempered clouds, just look up

    during a thunder storm. (Please take safety pre-cautions, these clouds may just send a lightning

    bolt at you!). The most (in)famous of all the Nim-bus clouds in RainBoogle island is the terribleNimby. Nimby is Foodys cloud. Unfortunatelyhe is not very well-trained because Foody kept

    saying he was a cuddly little cloud (which he waswhen he was a baby) who just needed some time

    to grow up into a well-mannered cloud. RainBoogleIsland citizens are still waiting for that day tocome! Foody has got into many a scrap with theother Raindrops because of Nimby but somehowhe manages to set things right in the end - which

    is all that matters!

    TheNimbus

    cloud

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    Hi readers,I love to spend mytime at the Rain-Boogle Island library,along with the otherRaindrops, readingmy favorite books.

    Starting this issue,we would like to in-troduce books to youthat we or our friends have en-

    joyed reading. Do write in to tell us what books you are read-ing and we will share them with the our readers. Lets spreadthe Joy of reading!

    Love,Grandma.

    This time Anjana Iyer writes about Smudges day out...

    James Herriot, the worlds most famous vet, wrote a se-ries of stories for children. Smudges Day Out is one suchheartwarming story set in the beautiful Yorkshire country-

    side in England. The illustrations are so beautiful and realisticthat they immediately transport you to the hills and dales ofYorkshire.

    Smudge is a lamb belonging to Harry Cobb, son of FarrmerCobb. Both he and his sister Smartie were looked after by

    young Harry. Along with their mother, Smudge and Smartie

    grazed for weeks in the spring sunshine in a large, fencedmeadow with hundreds of other sheep and lambs. SoonSmudge was bored and wanted to explore the world outside.

    Grandmas book review

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    Passpartouts Page

    This time, Ive found a sitecalled The toymaker. Visit

    the site www.thetoymaker.comand you will nd printable papertoys. Print, put together and play!The paper toy shop even has aminiature toyshop, a tooth fairy ga-zebo, a chocolate truck and much more.Printing the templates on card paper

    makes them extra strong. If you donot have a color printer, you could takeideas and make your own designs. LikeI did. I made a tooth fairy gazebo andrest stop for the tooth fairy when Ilost my tooth and the tooth fairy was so pleased, she leftme a dragon tooth. Cool huh?

    Click on the link to Free toys for a range of goodies.There are even some math toys!!. Explore around a bit be-cause there are fun and interesting things to be found.

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    Today we found a link to relight stories which we thoughtwas interesting.

    We will see you soon with our next nd. Until then...

    Aurevoir,Passpartout

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    The Sausage tree

    It is a native of tropical West Africa. Thetree is evergreen, spreading, with a roundedhead and dense branching system. The treesgive very good shade. The owers are large,cup shaped, waxy to touch and grow on longstems that look like chandeliers. Some birdsare attracted to the owers and the stems make

    ideal footholds. The fruits are large, heavy andsausage or gourd-like in appearance and hang from long cord-like stems. The trees ower in April-May and are fertilizedby bats.

    My younger brother once brought two-three of the sausageshome. We tried cutting one open but it was very hard anddifcult to cut. One other sausage we painted. The others

    were just lying around in our house till our mother told us tothrow them away. :) My brothers like climbing the sausagetrees in our colony, as they are easy to climb.

    Scientic name- kigelia pinnata

    Nature Journal :Trees ... make us sing and dance, make faces and giveower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that

    trees do everything to get attention like we do, except walk?- Alice Walker

    I (Aditi Elassery) am fascinated by the number and varietyof trees around me and their colorful personalities that Idecided to pay more attention to each of them - with mysenses and through my camera lens. Starting this issue, join

    me as I share pages of my nature journal with you, one treeat a time. Raindrops and I would love to hear your impres-sions on the tree that we are featuring or any other treethat you would like to talk about. Come join the tree hug-gers club.

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    Here are a few more interesting facts about the SausageTree:

    * Sausage Tree fruits are hung in African homes to

    ward off whirlwinds and to make crops grow well. * Medicine healers paint Sausage Tree fruits and usethem to diagnose the causes of diseases.

    * Zulu warriors polish the handles of their spears withSausage Tree leaves and drink a Sausage Tree fruitmix ture to give them strength and courage in battle.

    * Squirrels can become tipsy from chewing on the huskof a Sausage Tree fruit.

    * You can replace the stones in your re hearth withSausage Tree fruits because they are re-proof.

    * You can use hollow Sausage Tree fruits to make dishes, cups, mousetraps and dolls.

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    What a beautiful, sunny morning.It makes you happy to be alive,doesnt it? We cant let the sun

    outshine us! We have to beam,too!- Takayuki Ikkaku

    The Pink HouseBy Andrea Vincent