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8:30 am, the beginning of a new day in the world of Mercury. We regrettably woke up and rose from our warm and welcoming bed. Showers were next on the list along with brushing our teeth and then off to the breakfast room. In there we had the usual offerings of cereal, bread with margarine, butter, honey and jam. Beverages included milk, chai and coffee.
Next up on the timetable was the regular four lessons from our esteemed teachers, including Uncle Arif Hasham, Aliraza bha Alimohammed, Dr Mahmood Datoo and Sheikh Shahnawaz. Aliraza bha’s lesson was about death and the hereafter and about the seven stages of the soul from the moment of its creation to its eternity in the hereafter. Uncle Arif then took our class with another of his beautiful presentations regarding the consequences to us in this life, in the grave and in the Akhirah of not praying namaaz. Inshallah none of these things will happen to us. Dr. Datoo then proceeded with his topic about the different types of Mulsims there are in the world and what the word ‘Khoja’ actually means. Finally we had Sheikh how gave us a very informative talk on the importance of Quran. All these topics were very interesting with Dr. Datoo’s and the Sheikhs being the favourite of them all.
What happened next in the day was of great surprise. Many of us thought that we would be as normally and have sports after the afternoon prayers, but instead we were whipped off to Stockholm to do some sightseeing and souvenir shopping. We all had to take our packed lunch and walk for the slowest 30 minutes in our lives to the King’s palace where the boat was planned to pick us up. In true Khoja style we ended up hurriedly walking around the jetty to end up in the same place as we started in order to get our places on the boat. Finally when everyone got on the boat and found a seat, the atmostphere was lively and everyone enjoyed themselves to the max for the full hour. As we arrived we were welcomed by yet another castle with blue guards on patrol. Armed with our cameras we began taking pictures as if there was no tomorrow. Our next port of call was the shopping trip across the road. Loads of people were seeing buying ice cream cones and small thoughtful souveniers for their near and dear ones.
Our journey home was a train and bus ride followed up with an exhaustive serving of 15 minute walking. Once we reached the campsite we immediately gathered on the cricket pitch to view the final over of the cricket tournament, with Neptune only needing to remain in the game to win. After an exhilarating match we shuffled into dinner for a humble helping of Jacket potato and baked beans. Yummy =)
After dinner we went to the conference hall to start another PDT session abundant with lateral questions, mentor introductions (Sadiq Datoo and Abbasali Datoo) which were enjoyable, informative but fun and interesting at the same time; followed with a summary of what happened in today’s classes. We then had a new memory quiz which really tested our recall and team working in memorising a piece of text and answering questions about it.
Mercury
Abbas Alidina, Ali-Redha Muthaliff, Altaf Dhanji, Feisal Salemohamed, Hussein-Abbas Ebrahim, Kazim Pardhan, Kumail Jaffer, Mohammad Baqir Khaki
Murtaza bha Merali, Aqil bha Datoo
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