We had been planning to take the children to the museum and Cubbon park for a while. The children have been super excited about this for a long time and we decided to make it happen as a culmination of the summer camp. We had organised buses and talked to most of the parents to seek permission. Definitely one of the most nervous I’ve ever been. I have not even been able to sleep well worried about whether we would be able to pull it off. Throughout the day too I was a little on edge and definitely super stressed. This is something we never thought would be possible a year ago but we felt that given the progress we made we could try to do this.  The day started off with some tension with one of the bus drivers getting confused about the timings. Luckily we were able to reach him and he made it not too late. This was pretty much the story of the entire day where we’d have some stressful situations that would mostly work out.  Some children came in after seeing the bus and the group. They have not been super regular at the center but they are children we know. We made sure to meet their parents and take their permission. I wasn’t so sure about taking the children to be entirely honest and the difference in our ability to handle the children really showed. Some of these children stole some things from one of the vendors at the museum though once the other children pointed it out they did give it to us. Huge positive for us to see the difference between the learners who have been regular and not so regular but still disappointed to have this behaviour from the children we had taken.  It was really heartening to see some adults from the community accompany us as well. It seemed as though some groups were a little concerned about our ability to handle the children so they also accompanied us when we invited them and we were quite grateful and happy for the support rather than the children not being able to join. One of the biggest mistakes we made was to assume that water would be available at the museum and the park. The children would get thirsty throughout the day and that definitely added to their restlessness. While they were understanding, it was definitely something we should make sure doesn’t happen and make sure that we have plenty of water for the day. We were mostly able to buy some water bottles as and when it was necessary but it did lead to some fighting amongst the children as to who would get access to the bottle first.  The bus ride was quite fun and pretty much uneventful. The children had a blast singing and dancing and before long we made it to the museum. Once we made it to the museum we divided into groups of four or five where we had children accompany one facilitator. I ended up with children who were generally slightly difficult to take care of. I initially started off super optimistic trying to explain the museum exhibits. Very quickly I realised that this was not happening and the children were mostly interested in just pressing the buttons and playing with the exhibits. I really struggled throughout to ensure the children don’t really inconvenience or hurt other groups and also not damage the exhibits. The exhibits were all somewhat interactive learners all wanted to press the buttons and play with the exhibits and would often get into some fights when the others would take time to get done. The entire museum experience was quite taxing and the children probably didn’t take away much science from it. Perhaps we could have a debrief and talk about some of the exhibits. I’m looking forward to some of these concepts from the exhibits in the school lessons for the children and see if this visit has made an impact. I got a really rude shock when one of the other visitors asked me if the children were “mentally retarded”. I explained that they were really excited but it was something that definitely made me get annoyed with the person who asked. I’m definitely quite protective of the children and if I was not taken by surprise I would have probably responded with something not so nice. Managing the children at the museum is by far the hardest thing I’ve done in my life and I definitely feel quite proud of handling it without many incidents. There were occasions where there was fighting but I was able to settle the situation. One time the learners tried to break the line when others were waiting and then too I was able to convince the learners to wait. I’m not sure if I should have just let them be or actually intervene but in the end I decided on the latter. I was especially proud of one of the learners who I was able to settle down by stopping him and asking him to breathe. When I reflect now on this I definitely feel that the learners were easier to deal with than I give them credit for. They were significantly better behaved than they are at the center and were mostly just excited. They were clearly aware of the situation they were in and were definitely trying to behave. The usual challenge again was that they would not get access to everything and when I distracted them with another exhibit they were mostly able to settle down. When I was at the museum I regretted it completely but now I’m sure if we had to do another trip I’d be more than happy to.  Just as we were planning to watch a 3D movie as a group we had one mini group go missing. This group’s facilitator was one of the members of the community. One of the mistakes we had made was not taking their phone number. Luckily we found them quite soon on a different floor and we very quickly took their number. All the learners were able to watch the 3D movie and they all had a blast watching it. To hear some of the learners talk about how much they loved this movie and how the effects made this whole effort completely worth it.  We took the bus to Cubbon Park and found a nice place to sit and eat. We had some confusion with one bus driver going somewhere so we had to all sit in the same bus. The lunch drop off too had some confusion with the person delivering going to my house. Finally, the lunch reached the children and we all had samosa, a roll, maddur vada and some more snacks. We had mixed responses about the lunch and I definitely wondered if it was enough. One learner directly asked us if this is all lunch was. I’m quite sure the learners didn’t enjoy it too much and they didn’t feel comfortable to be critical so that they wouldn’t hurt us. They’re probably used to having rice and this is something we should try to make happen next time. The learners also completely wasted their vegetables for the most part and maybe we could discuss this at the center as well.  Just after lunch as we were gathering the learners we noticed that a group of learners weren’t to be seen. We spent the next hour or so trying to find the learners. Some of them came back to the group but two were missing for the longest time. These moments were super stressful for us and we were really snapping at all the other learners to have them just sit in one place and wait. The learners too understood the gravity of the situation and were quite annoyed at these other two for just walking away. To keep the learners occupied we bought them some ice cream but in general it was a really stressful situation. Finally they showed up and we all felt quite relieved.  We debated whether to head back or not but the learners really wanted to do the Columbus ride at Cubbon Park. Some frustrated facilitators felt that we should not do this given that two learners had drifted off but we felt it would be unfair to the others and we decided to take them to the aquarium as well as the ride. Both of these were quite alright and the children quite enjoyed themselves.  Seeing how many tickets we had to buy for each of these places, some learners pointed out how much it had cost us and thanked us profusely for the experience. They were quite apologetic that we had spent quite a lot of money on them for the tickets, food etc. This was a hard situation to respond to. While we did not want to have the learners feel that money wasn’t important, we also didn’t want them to feel too guilty or anything and to enjoy their experience. Wonder how we can go about this conversation better.  On the way back to the center was by far one of the most fun bus rides I’ve ever been on. The children had a blast dancing to some music and I was able to join in as well. I’ve never been much of a dancer but I genuinely danced along with the children overjoyed that we had pulled it off. The day had its ups and downs and we had a whole lot of challenges but I would do it again in a heartbeat.