my first ride on an aeroplane! after a few hours of initial excitement, i ended up watching phantom of the opera, hide and seek and lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events to entertain myself.
we reached sri lanka in the noon. we took a bus down to Galle. it was a 6hr ride from colombo to galle. along the way, there were many sights.. buddhist temples, churches, mosques, etc.. people standing in front of their houses looking at the vehicles drive past them. (in my opinion, i think this is a part of their way of life and their slow paced environment). i found that weird at first.. especially since it was a working hour and people were standing as though they had nothing to do..
at first things weren't smooth sailing. the rain hindered our progress; we couldn't paint the walls that were out in the open and when we attempted to paint the pillars in the school building, the construction workers would prevent us from painting because they have yet to plaster the pillars. so we were stuck at square one for our manual work (mainly thanks to the rain), doing nothing except playing games and learning sinhala from the kids.
the english teachers, us and the adorable grades 1 & 2!
we spent the 2 weeks teaching the kids english, painting the school, carrying wood, clearing playground of rubble and grass patches.. in the process of clearing the rubble, we unearthed an anthill. the one that housed those gigantic red ants. we found tiny frogs too. all these were done in the morning. we paid visits to the idp camps in the noon.. for most of the time, the 12 of us were split up into 2 teams, one to conduct english lessons and the other to do manual work. both areas of work are exhausting. one is mentally exhausting, the other- physically. everyday at 5pm, we would meet the kids at the field to play sports. that is how we build bonds with the children.
i guessed i have met the expectations i had of this trip. i hoped to make a difference to the kids; and all of us did. people there were noticing our actions and they noted a change in the kids. the older kids and the teachers told us that the children hated english before we had english lessons for them. but after we taught them english, they had begun to speak english among themselves.. and i guess we have made a difference in their lives by sparking their interest in the language. i think the project was aptly named 'Project S.E.E.D.S'.
look! our mural painting!
i cried when we left. i cried because we put a lot of effort into this school, and also because i wanted to continue on with the effort. i cried because i was grateful to the sri lankans for giving me beautiful memories, valuable lessons.. all of which are intangible things. i had also gotten used to their slow pace of life. at first it felt tough to work in sri lanka, since things moved so slowly and our Singaporean tendency is to get things done fast. from this, we learnt to adapt to the new circumstances and to make do with the things we have at the moment. mr wasanta, a sri lankan engineer in the school, felt we work from the heart, especially so because we are willing to do manual work even though it is evident from the smooth texture of our hands that we are unaccustomed to such work.
during our last two days at the school, we held an english camp for grades 6-11 and a sports camp for the grades 1-5. the kids really enjoyed themselves. every single one of us in the team worked hard and put our heart and soul into this project..all of us left a part of ourselves in sri lanka.
the last night we spent in galle touched me. after our usual 5pm sports with the kids, the older children and the adults lined them up. we were all puzzled as to why they stood in a line. the adults also got us to line up and the sri lankan kids began to walk in a line to shake each of our hands. i felt extremely touched...
i think for all of us, before we went for the trip, we felt 2 weeks was such a long period of time. when we arrived in sri lanka, it felt as though 2 weeks were too short a time for us in sri lanka cos we want to do more. the experience feels surreal because we didn't stop to think for a moment, what about our studying? what about block test? it seems we're back to reality in singapore.
