Hi !! I Am Flat Ben

" Hi !! I am Flat Ben. I shall be your friend for the whole week of Spring Break. I am very excited, we are going to have a lot of fun together."

On Friday 16th of April, Ilham brought home a new friend "Flat Ben" to spend the Spring Break with us. Ilham was very excited about it. He was supposed to bring Flat Ben whenever he goes and he would write about their adventures together in the book provided by the teacher.

So, for the first few days, Ilham brought Flat Ben wherever he goes. They slept together at night with Flat Ben under the pillow. He brushed his teeth in the morning with Flat Ben standing next to the tooth paste. They ate and watched TV together, practically everything they did together . They even swam together (against my advice) in the bath tub :) I have to admit that Flat Ben was a good swimmer and he floats well in the water. You don't have to worry that he might drown in the bubble bath... Flat Ben loved water and would not have come out of the water had Ilham not realised that his colour had started to run!!!

But then, after a few days, Ilham started to feel the responsibility of bringing Flat Ben everywhere was kind of boring. Luckily Ilham's mother always had her big bag with her, so in Flat Ben into her bag and he would only come out once in a while to play with Ilham. But it's ok because he still followed them everywhere.... to Hoorn, The Hague, Amsterdam and the Flower Parade in Haarlem. The most interesting place was the Ajax shop where he bought Ilham his favourite Ajax jersey. You don't know Ajax? Why Ajax is the most famous football club in the whole of The Netherlands!!! It is kind of like that over famous club in the UK, you know that M..M..M something, aahh MU I think.

Ilham was used to having Flat Ben around that he felt very sad when he had to send Flat Ben back to his flat world when school reopened yesterday. He was actually crying that Sunday night!!! I told him that Flat Ben will only be going for a little while, he will come back to live with him when the school closes for Summer Holiday. Only then, he quietened a bit.

I think it is amazing that a little friend like that can have an impact on a child's life. What I like is it encourages Ilham to write in the book almost every day, sometimes with a lot of persuasion by his mother of course :) When I talked to one of Ilham's friend's mother this morning, she too said that it was a good idea for her son to have a "friend" like that.