Friday, April 19, 2013

April 18 & 19: English classes, more painting and amazing food

We started the morning of day 3 out with a special presentation at the Community Centre by the English class of the village. We were all greeted with beautiful bouquets of flowers by the children. They sang us a number of English songs including twinkle twinkle and the older children presented an English discussion about their local market. We were all thoroughly impressed with their level of English considering they only have English classes (sponsored by Trip Canada) once a week.

We got a lot of progress done on day 3 of working, however, day 4 was a killer. Yesterday we painted 3 rooms of the school and lots of the outside. Over at the temple we finished parging the main room of the new eating area and completed all the finishing work on the rest of the walls. At the end of the day half of us went on a river cruise near Tangalle where we saw peacocks, monkeys, fruit bats and several local birds. We arrived back around 7pm and enjoyed an amazing pizza dinner at our home away from home, Moonstone Villas.

Today lots more painting was completed at the school but we were very disappointed that we did not have access to one of the main buildings, which is in dire need of a paint job. All the parging was finished at the temple and the first base coats of paint were applied to the eating area. Prep work was also done on the wood frames for staining to be done tommorow. We had another amazing lunch at the Community Centre cooked for us by a local family. However, all you could hear coming from the Community Centre at the end of lunch was snoring. We were all exhausted! It was extremely hot and we dragged ourselves through the rest of the afternoon. After a quick dip in the ocean in all our work clothes to wash off, we are now back at the Moonstone Villas getting ready for a lovely meal out tonight at Buckinghams - given we all stay awake!

Looking forward to finishing off the rest of the school tomorrow and cleaning off the improved playground in time for the children's return Monday morning. Cannot wait to see the looks on the children's faces when they arrive back after their holiday!

Isthtuti! Pasua Hemawemoo!
(Thank you! See you later!)

Jamie Shea
DWC Participant
Sri Lanka, April 2013

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