Day 5

We woke up early this morning after having a great nights sleep in our new hotel, Bridge View, and started our day with a great sausage and egg breakfast before leaving for the school. We were greeted by an excellent assembly with singing and talks from the Sri Lankan children which we couldn’t really understand because it was in Tamil, the local language! After the assembly, we went to our classrooms, led by the local teachers. Soon after students began filing in and the day began.

For the activities our groups did various activities from Athletics and mini Olympics to colouring and paper planes. At first we were nervous because of the language barrier and the amount of effort that we put in over the past few months to get to this stage, but after the first few minutes it became easier and all the children loved the all activities. At some points groups had to improvise for example one group had to accommodate for the older children by changing colouring to paper planes.

At the break after two, one hour lessons we were provided with refreshments and great opportunity to socialize with the local children; who started to try and teach us more basic Tamil such as numbers and the alphabet, after break we continued with our final two lessons which proved to be particularly enjoyable now that we had planned out the best way to run our lessons. After completing our last lessons we proceeded to watch a cricket between Mr. Taylor and the local children. Finally we were provided with a lunch at the school before leaving. Overall our first day at the school had been amazing.

Once we had said our goodbye’s to the kids we headed back to the hotel to rest before going on a tour around Batticaloa. Firstly our tour guide took us to the local ford where we had glimpses of jellyfish before heading to the Dutch Fort