As Sri Lankans we believe month of April brings prosperity. It's a very joyful month for all of us. Not only to the humans, but nature is also dressing themselves beautifully and getting ready for the spring. April is one of the most beautiful months in the year. Nature is changing to beautiful sceneries. Flowers are blooming. Trees come up with new leaves. The entire environment is going greener. It seems like birds are also happier in this month.

Sri Lanka is a multi-religious country. There are people who follow Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Catholic and Islam. We celebrate each and every different religious festival in our country. In the month of April Buddhist and Hinduisms celebrate traditional New Year. In this year we celebrated it on 13^th and 14^th April. We call it Sinhala and Tamil New Year. The Sinhalese are the people who follow Buddhism and Tamils are the people who follow Hinduism. We have many traditional rituals to attend to. The whole country cook, eat, attend religious activities at the same time. We call those times auspicious times. Those auspicious times are made by astrologers according to the astrology. There are many fun filled activities in New Years' time. We play different traditional games and all the country fills with festivity. It?s basically holiday season to all the young and old ones. We have New Year festivals planned in this season. We call it 'Avurudu Uthsawa' in Sinhalese. All most all the organizations, schools, universities, colleges, communities organize these 'Avurudu Uthsawa'.  There are many fun filled games planned in these festivals. One of the interesting games is choosing the New Year price and princesses. We have many other games such as drawing the eye of the elephant, musical chairs, counting papaya seeds, choosing most joyful laugh, climbing sliding tree etc. My college is also organizing a New Year festival this 29^th.And I am looking forward to participate in it.

Asian koel (Koha in Sinhalese) is very famous bird in this season. It starts singing from end of March until New Year season finishes. We say Koha is a New Year bird and it brings the New Year message to us.

The month of April has given birth to many wonderful rituals. Some of the rituals are dated back to ancient times. Before industrial factories are started in Sri Lanka, we mainly depended on agriculture. So there are still many amazing rituals which connect with harvest, agriculture, nature, animals etc.

 For me, New Year isn't the only exciting thing. The start of this month was pretty exciting too. I was able to get the permission to establish an Eco club at my college. I have also included the proposal, which I got the approval, in this report. One of my senior lecturer who is in charge of student affairs has asked me to submit a detailed report about the objectives of the Eco club. Since I am currently working on the detailed report I would be grateful if you could suggest some ideas too.

I beg your pardon for late submission of my April report. I hope you got some ideas about our traditional New Year festival and related rituals. You could get more information about New Year from below listed web sites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_New_Year 

https://www.lanka.com/events/sinhala-tamil-new-year/

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lkawgw/aluthavurudda.htm

http://srilanka.travel-culture.com/guide/avurudu.shtml

Not only Sri Lankans but some different Asian nationalities are also celebrating New Year in April. So I would love to wish all of my Tunza Eco generation friends and their families a very happy New Year. And may your life fills with happiness and prosperity!!!