The boarding school I attended from Grade 6 to Grade 10 in the Himalayan mountains of Pakistan is closing soon. I was asked to write something to share with the MCS school community and came up with this.

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Every child who attended MCS was given a copy of the comprehensive list of what to bring to boarding. Here are some other useful lists you might need, should you ever be starting MCS as a wide-eyed, innocent sixth grader.

Food you should always have in your stash and other yummy things to eat if you can’t get chicken karahi and fresh naan

Dried apricots from the Hunza Valley.

Mini chocolate Easter eggs sent annually from Australia by wonderfully kind friends.

A tin of condensed milk purchased slyly at the Mall and kept high in your closet, from which a surreptitious taste of deliciousness may be devoured in quiet moments.

An ‘energy blend’ of instant coffee, milk powder and sugar, mixed well, taken from a housemother’s room, and eaten from a mug with a teaspoon.

Auntie Eunice’s goop. Debbie Rupe’s cream-and-gingernuts cake.

Hot drinks of Horlicks, also from Auntie Eunice.

Places to go to be on your own when you’re an introverted child who needs space away from others, but you share a room with six ‘friends’ who aren’t always that friendly

Climb up above the bedroom closets and drawers in your bedroom onto the shelf where people keep their small bags. Shove things down to make just enough space for yourself and lie quietly high above everyone, hidden by the curtains.

Tuck your blankets cleverly under the mattress in the bed above you so you create your own little cubby house on your bed. You can survive there for a little while, until the air gets so stifling you need to put a head out to breathe.

Get into your bed headfirst under your blankets. See above: re breathing issues.

Sneak out of your room and head upstairs to the attic. Look to make sure no one is around, then find the little gap that opens into the trunks storage space. Squeeze through, and you’ll have a whole room to yourself! Find a truck to curl up on. If there’s enough light, you can take a book and read for a while.

When everyone else is jumbling together on a walk to Jhika, break away from the group and walk ahead or behind at your own pace. It’s quieter. You can think.

All the reasons you give yourself as to why you can’t run away from boarding and go home when you’re 11, a girl, and miserable.

I can’t speak Urdu properly, so I could never communicate to get myself on a bus and down the mountain to the railway station.

It’s too far to walk. Plus, if I walked, I’d be possibly more at risk of getting kidnapped…

Even if I made it to the railway station, I don’t have any money to buy a ticket. Plus travelling on my own puts me at risk of getting kidnapped…

I’d have to leave at night so I wouldn’t be missed, but I’d be terrified of the dark on my own… and at risk of getting kidnapped.

I can’t run away. But it feels too hard to stay.

Ways to feel free and alive

Rollerskating!

Walks in the dark under the stars!

Breathing fresh air, in view of the snow caps!

Being in love!

Singing!

Starting at the top of the hostel stairs and launching yourself on a slippery slide down the bannisters, flight after flight after flight!

Doing cartwheels along the edge of the brick balcony off the little kids lounge!

Learning. Reading. Writing!

Things to learn about yourself

Other people can be mean—really mean. But be careful: when pushed, you can be just as mean. Keep short records. Apologise.

You have more strength than you think.

Extraordinarily, forgiveness is real. You can become best friends with people even after hard times together.

Be, genuinely, who you actually are. If people like you, they’ll like you. If they don’t, they don’t.

Middle Kids Games

Chain tag is a safe game, although avoid being tagged by the fastest runner in sixth grade. You will feel like you’re flying on the end of a slippery, weird rope that could break at any time and send you spinning onto the concrete.

Couple tag: unless you’re in a couple, avoid, avoid, avoid.

Learn the rules to Prisoners’ Base as a matter of urgency, your first week in, or you’ll forever be running incoherently back and forth, not sure what you’re doing, while other people yell at you.

Dutch Blitz: basically, see Prisoners’ Base.

Roller skating parties are the BEST.

Survival strategies when things are stacked against you

Keep your chin up. Literally. Put it high in the air and walk around like that. It gives you a ‘don’t mess with me’ vibe.

Try the ‘kill them with kindness’ approach. If every day you say ‘Hi’ with a smile to the girl in your eighth-grade bedroom who freezes you out for a month for no discernible reason, you never know… one day she might just come and apologise for being ridiculous and you can be friends again.

Even though your French teacher asks why you skipped class, the hour after your final GCSE exam, the last of a series of 20 exams which you took, while still going to school and doing all the regular homework, you should still skip her class and spend the hour reading Pride and Prejudice, just so you can get your head together.

Know the rooms in which you’ll always be welcome, and which staff members they belong to. Visit those rooms but try not to go too often. You don’t want to wear out your welcome.

Read your Bible and remember that things were stacked pretty high against Jesus. He knows how you feel. Lean into that.

Write letters, frequently and to everyone. Do your best to have a mother who writes to you three times a week as well as grandparents who send news from Australia.

Feelings you will have because you have left your home behind

You will know the dank vacuum of dread and despair that invades your body when the holidays are coming to an end and return to school is looming. You will push it away and pretend it doesn’t exist but it will return and return and return.

Sobbing.

Sobbing into your pillow.

Retching with sobs. A dripping pillow.

Quiet detachment and resignation. You’re here, on your own, and you’ve got to get through.

(Very occasionally) a mild sense of risky freedom, because it’s unlikely your parents will find out if you do that thing you’re not really supposed to do…

Life skills and lessons you will learn

How to French braid, with practice on all your friends’ hair.

How to light a gas heater in sub-zero temperatures (Celsius).

How to get dressed without ever baring any crucial bits of your body—both for warmth and for privacy.

If you sing ‘It is warm, it is warm, it is warm’ loudly and at length, you’ll be warmer.

The lesson that ‘if you want it done, you’d better do it yourself’, which is demonstrated daily by you getting out of your cosy bed at 6.30 to light the gas heater, because you want to be warm, and no one else is going to do it. (Best not to sing at that time of the morning tho.)

How to fold hospital corners when you make your bed.

That your MCS experience will bond you with some people for life.

That walks under the stars, in pine forests and near mountain views are soul-renewing.