Just after we'd finshed our A Levels myself and my friend Keren went out to Sri Lanka on a 6 week placement from 1st July to 12 August this summer. Here is our journal......

Tuesday 4 July 2006

Arrived in Hikkaduwa finally after many unfortunate adventures including lost luggage and closed hotels..our guest house (Sunil's Beach Hotel) seems very nice and comfortable if not luxurious but we weren't expecting a palace or 5 star hotel anyway, in fact we love the retro decor and the fact it is RIGHT ON THE BEACH!!! we even have a little balcony and the view is great!! we were excited to see there was a pool but little did we know we wouldnt have a great deal of time to use it!! We were thrown right in the deep end today; we were taken to a small afternoon tuition school Nirosha School, in the nearby fihing town of Rathgama by Sam and our co ordinator Nalinda 'Linz' and introduced to Mrs Mendes, the school teacher and the 15 children aged between 5 and 10 years who we would be working with for our 6 week stay. The kids all were very very shy and reluctant to raise their hands and answer questions and as we had NO experience of teaching before being straight out of college we had no idea what to do! we blundered through a little speech (which they didn't understand) but today they were just content to watch us! We just kept thinking WHAT DO WE DO!!!??? We tried some simple excercises such as drawing and naming animals and basic shapes and colours which went down ok as they knew colours so it gave them some much needed confidence, and after we started dishing out haribo they were really keen to answer! (this photo is the view we wake up to every morning)

Thursday 6 July

By now we are kind of settling into our daily routine of work-though finding it hard to cope in the early morning heat!! We are spending our mornings at a large junior school called Sirisumana school, which has 1000 kids in and working mainly with grade 3 and 4 (aged around 8 and 9) although at the moment we are not taking classes as we are bit intimidated by the size of them! (there are 40-45 kids in a class) but they like to talk to us and ask us questions and they love to show off the work in their english books! We are spending the time reading to and hearing the kids read passages from their english textbooks which they seem to enjoy. We have a short break for lunch which we spend at Sunil's planning for the afternoon lesson in Nirosha school. We're still tryin to assess the abilities of the kids there so still doing very basic excerses but trying to incorporate some kind of structure into our teaching!!

----> these are our little pals from Nirosha school

Monday 10th July

We've spent the weekend on the south coast in Hambantota where we've been very busy!! Very early start on Saturday morning to Uda Welawe nature reserve where we were meeting some nursery school kids and their parents from a kindergarten in Tangalle, another Help Lanka project. We spend the day in open top jeeps looking at herds of elephants-the kids loved it-some of them had never seen wild elephants before. The next day we went to Yala National Park which was great-we saw some amazing things like a tiny elephant cub that had been born the day before! On Monday, we went to the opening of a kindergarten called Harriet House, also in Hambantota in a recently constructed tsumani village. It was Poya Day so we got special protection bracelets from one of the guys there! We attempted to plant a tree but being weak and feeble someone had to take over!! From the holistic village, we went to a nearby event set up by the TearDrop foundation for local kids where we helped to paint hands and supervise crown making and bouncy castle!

Thursday 13 July

Back in Hikkaduwa, this afternoon we had another event like the one in Hambanta-cue more hand painting-there was supposed to be a big red London bus full of activities and toys but unfortunatley it had broken down. Still, everyone had a great time despite the fact it started absolutely HAMMERING it down half way through so the playing field turned into a huge soggy mess! Despite this the boys carried on playing cricket in the pouring rain! Unfortunatly me and Keren returned home a few hours later to soaking wet laundry on the balcony...grrr!














In Indiga's tuk tuk in the Rathgama Junction on way to Nirosha School


Friday 14 July

Today was another early start-we were going to a conference in Galle about relief work in Sri Lanka after the tsunami and what was been done to re build the communities. We unfortunatly had nothing to wear due to the fact ALL our clothes were still sopping wet but had to improvise with help lanka t-shirts and slightly mouldy skirts. The day was rounded off nicely with a party on the beach in Rathgama for Sam's birtday-lots of local people turned up as well as all the Richard Huish students-it was great fun especially dancing in the pouring rain and screaming along to Bon Jovi 'its my life' the only english song the band knew-a moment we'll all remember forever!!

Thursday 20 July

The kids at Nirosha school are really coming out of their shells and we're starting to form real bonds with each of them and beginning to find out all their individual characters-we have such fun with them playing english playground games-they LOVE hopscotch and their absolute favourite is 'what's the time mr dog' (we thought dog would be easier for them to understand) although this can turn a bit violent towards the end!! We have a better idea of what they can do so we spend our lunch breaks making worksheets comprising of simple exercises such as wordsearches based on what we've taught them and matching the word to the picture etc. The kind of thing we in england are given when we are in reception/y1. The little 5 year olds find it hard to keep up so we draw pictures for the 3 of them, which they love and get very excited when the felt pens come out!

Keren teaching Hopscotch at Nirosha School!!


Friday 21 July

This whole week we've actually been taking lessons at Sirisumana school instead of just being classroom assistants! We arrived a few days ago to be told that we were supposed to be teaching which of course we were totally unprepared for so we just kind of stumbled through by using the blackboard and talking about ourselves (our names, ages etc. and what our favourite things are) and got the kids to give their own answers as well in front of the class. We found the kids here are alot more outgoing and more prepared to give their answers in fornt of their friends and are alot less shy, even a bit naughtier sometimes! We've started using our own homemade sheets for this class too, focusing alot on drawing (eg pics of themselves and their favourite animals etc) luckily we were able to use the photocopier donated by Richard Huish college, but recently it has developed a problem which we have no idea about; luckily there is a photocopy shop just next door so we can go there. They are starting to knock down the main school building in preparation to move everything to the new building which should be finished by november; a bit of a health and safety hazard as the kids are playing on a building site!!


Smiley Sasindu!


Saturday 22 July

Spent the whole day on a guided tour round Galle with Linz and our tuk tuk driver Indiga who has kind of adopted us into his family-he takes us to his home in the jungle and climbs trees to pick king coconuts for us and his wife makes us lots of goodies!! We sit there and eat

while he invites the whole community round to look at us-but by now we are used to the stares, people are just interested to see us there in the middle of the jungle! we are a bit of a novelty!
Galle was really good, we got to look round the fort and spent the afternoon trawling the jewellery shops and got blagged by jewellers for being tourists! Linz also took us to see another tsunami village inland in Rathgama in the evening; 1000 brand new homes for victims of the tsunami.


Us with our adopted family!

Tuesday 25 July

Tonight we were taken on a magical mystery tour by Linz and two of his friends, one who drives a tuk tuk. We've spent quite alot of time with Linz and his friends, he seems to know everyone! From drinking arrack in random bars to playing carom(very embarrasingly badly) in his mate's house, he seems determined to want to show us EVERYTHING about his home town! We ended up drinking tea at a relative of his friend's house at 11pm which was a bit random to say in the least! He even dragged his half naked brother out of bed to say hi to us!! We were driven to the nearby town of Ambalangoda to a dark local bar then back to Hikkaduwa to a beach party at a bar called Mambo's which was to be our second home for the last 2 weeks of our stay!!

MASKS!!


Thursday 27 July

Today we had a great day at Nirosha school. We are teaching the kids the parts of the body in english, after going through animals, colours, shapes, numbers, the alphabet, weather, months of the year and days of the week as well as some basic conversation ('hello, how are you today?' 'I'm fine thankyou' etc...) so we decided it would be fun to make some masks. We brought a ton of arts and crafts materials from home and the Richard Huish lot gave all the stuff to us that they hadn't used when they went home, so we were pretty well equipped! The kids had such a fun time esp. with the glitter!! And they all looked so happy as they NEVER get to do this kind of stuff and muck about usually. We can't believe the progress they've made in terms of the fact they are all so outgoing and confident, they even mimic some of the things we say in english and they each have developed their own crazy personalities. But they are never naughty, we have never had to tell anyone off. One of the shyest and quietest little boys, Lakshan, 5, always rambles away to me in Sinhalese and I speak back in english, pretending to understand esch other! Linz, Indiga and the hotel staff at Sunil's have all tried to make us master the language so we've picked up little phrases and random words. We can count and say the days of the week and family memebers as well as other little things!

Sunday 29 July

Spent the weekend in Bentota, in the luxurious Taj Exotica Hotel which we treated ourselves to for 1 night as we wanted to ride an elephant!! We had a great weekend living the life of luxury and sunbathing but it is good to be back! We've adapted so well we're not even very scared of the feral dogs roaming around the streets of Hikkaduwa! One sat under our table the other day and we weren't even scared!!

Tarindu, Rajith, Suneth and Menaka

Saturday 4 August

Can't believe how quickly the past weeks have gone! We only have 8 days left and even fewer of teaching so we're trying our hardest! Although we have been ill quite alot because of dehydration and our lack of food!! The local food is really great-we eat out most nights cos you can buy fresh fish, chips and salad for the equivalent os about £3 and its way nicer than anything you can get in england! We also like a Sri Lankan breakfast of roti, dahl and sambol some mornings. Today we introduced Nirosha school to hide and seek-have to stick to basic games cos of the language barrier, they loved it though there was some pretty dangerous hiding places-eg up very tall trees!!

Tarindu doin our homemade worksheet!





Sunday 5 August

Very busy weekend-we decided to make the most of our final days here so we left on Friday night to go all the way across the country to Aragum Bay on the east coast with our new friends who own Mambo's. It was great fun-watching the sun rise at 4am on a deserted beach with wild elephants wandering about is another experience we'll never forget! (us at a party in Aragum Bay)



Sunrise at Aragum Bay



Monday 7 August

Today was our last day at Sirisumana, and it was very emotional!! As we had been teaching about 250 kids in total over 6 weeks we thought we wouldn't be that emotional when we left because we thought we wouldn't be as close to them, but it was very sad to leave them! Although we didn't feel we'd progressed with them as much as the Nirosha kids because we were unable to give them a great deal of structure seeing as we were moving classes so often and it was very hard to find out what they had and had not learnt, but we still had lots of fun there, and one class in particular really enjoyed us being there especially the girls who would give us hair clips and play with our hair! (this photo is of the girls from 4E at Sirisumana)



Lovely smiley Sirisumana kids

Tuesay 8 August

Today was a VERY emotional day!!! It was our last day at Nirosha school and we had planned a little fun day/party for the kids- provided snacks bought from good old Food City and party games, and BINGO which they love cos it means they can earn stars for their star chart we'd made them a few weeks ago. We had also bought each child a present as now we know them so much better than when we first turned up and bumbled through a shambles of a lesson!! Sam had sent over a box of toys that we sifted through-we also bought some additions and had taken photos of them to give as well. The day went really well-as they already knew all the games they really really enjoyed it. Especially 'tea time'!! When the winner of the star chart competition was announced and presented with roller skates there was no jealousy-even from the one girl who everyone (including herself and us!) thought would win. Everyone was genuinly pleased for him!! There were tears when we left-not from the kids-from us! We cried like babies!!! Very embarrasing! The kids didn't really understand we were leaving. Even Mrs Mendes collapsed in floods of tears on my shoulder!! She said we had become like daughters to her, and kept Linz out of trouble!!!


Hikkaduwa Sunset


Wedsnesday 9 August

Satisfied our huge desire for pizza last night at local restaraunt Refresh which is expensive in local money terms but we treated ourselves! We walked home along the beach at sunset which proves how far we've come- when we first arrived we were too terrified of 'ferocious' dogs and 'beach boys' to go near the beach at sunset but it was gorgeous. At night we were thrown a surprise leaving party at Mambo's (which was kind of illegal seeing as it was Poya Day) and ended up at a bakery eating fresh baked 'crocodiles' we just kept thinking WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE!!!?? We felt very important having our very own party and being the VIP guests! Loads of tourists turned up and it became a proper beach party which Hikkaduwa is famous for so it rounded up our trip nicely after the emotional last couple of days!

Thursday 10 July

Said a sad farewell to Linz and his friend who drove us up to Negombo to stay with my great aunt before we fly home tomorrow. I cried for about an hour which I felt pretty stupid for doing, by now we were absolutely exhausted and worried about the terrorist threat in the uk and covered in mozzie bites and just wanted to be back in Hikkaduwa with the kids! We had SUCH a great time, the experience of a lifetime and have promised all our new mates including all the kids, that we will come back to visit next year! We would absolutely recommend it to anyone, especially as a friend of Linz told us that many of the kids in Nirosha school were traumatised by the tsunami and barely spoke, and now look at them!! We felt very proud of ourselves then! And it's great to hear the kids say the things that we have taught them! Also, EVERYONE we met was so kind and friendly and we felt welcome absolutley everywhere we went. And we managed to do things we never thought we would be able to do! It was very hard work but by the end we forgot about all the times we were ill and knackered and skint and fed up and hot and sweaty because it was all such fun!