Mini-update

Last weekend we went to Ella, saw a 90 m waterfall, got full body treatment at a spa, ate amazing garlic curry, visited a reggae bar (which didn't play reggae at all - what's up Lonely Planet?), climbed little Adam's peak. We got Monday and Tuesday off because of Tuesday being a Poya day (Buddhist holiday - full moon. Buddha was born, entered Nirvana, and died - all three on a poya day) we went down to Tangalla beach on the south coast at met up with other volunteers who were staying there. Me and Amy managed to squeeze in Yala National Park on Tuesday (we spotted a leopard - score) and back to Maharagama in the middle of the night. More about all this in another post when I have more time, internet is extremely slow at the moment.

Herbal steam bath at the spa centre in Ella

Rawakana (?) water falls

Violeta on top of Little Adam's peak

Mark chilling in one of many hammocks at Tangalla beach

An elephant and Amy at Yala National Park

This weekend - Tangalla beach again, the day and a half we had there simply wasn't enough. Most volunteers are joining as well. Will surely be enjoyable. And then there's only one week left of volunteering, can't believe it's gone by so quickly!

Youth Teaching

Twice a week I teach English to young people (17-30 years old) at Maharagama youth centre. They're mostly from poor backgrounds and study things like electrician, bakery, beautician etc. What our prime job to do is to teach them spoken English, like everyday conversations. Most of them are good at writing and reading, but they are not the best at speaking. Lucy mentioned that in school they often get taught really complicated stuff like Shakespeare and so forth. So, basically we come in to (hopefully) teach them something they'll probably have use for in future life, both socially and work-wise. The more English you know, the easier you'll get a job (Edit: apparently most job interviews are, for some reason, in English here).

Before starting, I thought this would be a great challenge for me, as I don't think I'd be a good teacher, I simply don't have the patience. And the first couple of times, I did loose patience when they couldn't learn things as quickly as I wanted them to. Was there something wrong with my teaching methods? Have I misjudged their capabilities? Am I actually really bad at this? That was a horrible thought, because I don't like being bad at things.

Robbie in action

However, after a couple of weeks of teaching, with some tweaking of some of the phrases we were teaching them and advice from fellow volunteers, the students started to pick up a lot and really improving. Extremely rewarding, I can't believe I doubted myself, of course I can't be bad at things (jokes). Although, now a new challenge arose. Once the shyness was swept away from most of the students, we realised that their levels of English were extremely varied. Even if it felt a bit wrong, we divided the classes into advanced and normal, in order for the more advanced ones to get something out of this as well, and I think they appreciate this.

Our beautician class

So, the volunteer part that I was mostly doubting that I would manage to do well in has actually turned out to be the one I enjoy the most and I wish I could do it more often during the week! Don't get me wrong, I love the kids at the orphanages and seeing their smiles, but it takes longer for them to learn things, and there it's mostly about the playing around and doing fun games, which is very rewarding as well, but a different kind of reward. What really works for me with the youth teaching is how fast they pick up things, and how it seems like they actually enjoy a subject. If they did Shakespeare and advanced stuff, I can imagine English being one of those boring subjects you didn't look forward to in school. Now, hopefully, we have changed their opinion of it (at least a little bit), and I think I can now finally understand how some people love teaching.

Rain in Colombo

Sitting in an internet cafe in Colombo, bored. It's pouring down outside. Had to go in here early to sort out some visa business, and am now waiting for Amy, Violeta, Robbie and Mark to come in from Maharagama so we can take the local bus to Ella for the weekend. 6 hours, will be an experience for sure. Probably similar to the 10 hr one me and Robbie took from Arugam Bay to Colombo the day before the projects started.

Ella is a small town, but it's supposed to be incredibly beautiful, with amazing treks around the village filled with water falls, temples and mountains, cheap massage and spa places, renting of motor bikes, and a reggae bar with cold beer. Hopefully we will end up in a place like this:

And the word on the street is that Monday and Tuesday are bank holidays, so we might have them off. In that case we'll probably head down to the beach or a national park to see some leopards.

Rain has stopped now, need to go to the bus stop. As you were

Being on the news

Can't see the clip because the internet is too slow, but we should be here somewhere on this news clip. It's from the International Youth Day I wrote about before, when we met the president (the guy with the hefty mustache) I was in the front row on the far left.

Girls orphanage

Yesterday I still hadn't been allocated to a new orphanage, so out of slight boredom I joined Amy, Violeta, Rachelle and Harriet to their girls orphanage. What a different experience to the boys one Robbie and I had been to! It was so relaxed. The girls actually sat down for the whole time (well, mostly), did what they were supposed to do, didn't hit each other, and most importantly: I wasn't sweating at all. Normally when we come back from the boys orphanage it's hard to find a dry spot on our t-shirts.

It was interesting to see how the others were teaching, and I learned from them. Positive reinforcement for girls doesn't involve high 5, rather stars and "well done!" written down on their papers after they'd finished an assignment. That could easily work with boys as well I reckon.

I wrote earlier that they didn't hit each other, and they seemed quite friendly. However, after a while I noticed that the bullying amongst girls much more subtle. Whispers and giggling behind other girls' backs and so on. Hadn't encountered that before with the boys (just make them stop hitting each other and make them say sorry), but here you don't know what they're saying about them, so they could just claim that they were innocent. Instead I paid more attention to the 'targets' and much less to the bullies, and that seemed to work fine, the 'targets' lit up, and the bullies got bored after a while and continued with their assignments. A completely different experience yesterday, but nevertheless rewarding.

The entrance to the girls orphanage was so much nicer as well

Today we went with Amy to the boy's side of the same orphanage. All lovely boys, and very similar to the ones we had in Dehiwala. It feels good to have started getting afternoon routines. More about the disabled centre and youth teaching soon.

Things that amuse me, pt. 2

The shakenod/Sri Lankan wobble

This should’ve been the first one of these “things that amuse me”, but it really annoyed me at first, but now it’s just ridiculously fun. Basically, when you ask someone a question, they very often ‘wobble’ their heads, i.e. left ear to left shoulder and then right ear to right shoulder, no definite time, whatever strikes the shakenodder’s fancy. Sometimes they say “hari hari” which means okay. At first it looks like a shake of the head, so you think they mean ‘no’. But then you remember that Sri Lankans don’t like saying no. So, the whole thing altogether could mean:

• Yes

• No

• Maybe

• I don’t know

• Maybe yes

• Maybe no

• I really don’t know

• Definitely yes

… and so on. At first - very frustrating, as they do that if you ask, e.g:

“left or right?”
*wobble*
“right?”
*wobble*
“left?”
*wobble*
“So what is it then?? Left or right??”
"Hari hari"*wobble*.

At first very frustrating, but I now embrace it and will definitely bring it back to Europe muahha!

Projects: Spent the morning at the elderly center. Very calm as always. Will be allocated to a new afternoon orphanage tomorrow hopefully.

Kandy Weekend

Zoe & Violeta chilling by the train carriage
doorway as the jungle swishes by

Our camp site on the train floor

This weekend 15 of us were off to Kandy, the second biggest city in Sri Lanka. It is located in the hill country and is a bit chillier than the Colombo area. We got on an extremely busy train in Colombo on Friday afternoon that would take 4 hrs. People were literally hanging from the open doorways where you get on the train, while we were inside, trapped like sardines. After an hour it got better, we got some space and made a camp on the train floor outside the toilet (you get used to the smell..). We sat next to a really nice family who offered us sweet Sri Lankan fruit (forgotten name), another man in the doorway, and had a really enjoyable journey as the sunset illuminated the lush hill country that passed by swiftly.  

Bus view of the hill country

On Saturday the group split up, some rented a tuk tuk for the day, while 6 of us needed to save some money and utilised the local buses. Everyone were off to elephant orphanage (ut we managed to go to different ones in the end haha). The entrance fee was 2000 rs (around 12 quid), but Mark managed to claim that he was a resident as he had a 3 month visa and was the only one who brought his passport and only paid 100 rs (60p!). The first thing we saw when we came in was feeding of 2 elephant children, and it wasn’t a good first impression. They were chained to their legs  with hundreds of people around them snapping flash photos every split second, and the poor elephants seemed pretty distressed. On the side of them it was even worse, an old elephant was even more chained up, eating some bamboo and was actually crying. We started to fear that this place only was a big gold mine, a typical tourist trap.

Feeding baby elephants

We moved on quickly to the open area, and with a relief we saw that over 50 elephants were free to do whatever they liked. We stood and admired them for a while, especially one that was crippled with only 3 legs were working after it had stepped on a land mine some years ago. We followed them to the river where they took a long bath, and looked much happier. Me and Mark managed to get close enough (even if you weren’t allowed) to touch the trunks of two of them. They do not feel like you would expect them to feel!

House photo: Amy, me, Violeta & Robbie

Paper made from elephant poo can be bought here

Random caged plant

Riverside

On their way to the river

Blending in

Eating together is fun

Strange feeling when touching the trunk

In the evening we attended a Sri Lankan dance show, it was nice, but not worth the money in my opinion (500 rs), didn’t think they were much better than the ones we saw on the international youth day (for free). Later we went to a pub, but an early night was in order (not really, but they closed at 11 pm).

Sri Lankan dance

On Sunday the rain was roaming down. According to the locals it always rains on the day or the day before the Pehara (a 10 day festival with elephants parades and dances) to clean up the streets for the festival. It was going to start at 8 in the eveing, but people were already taking seats on the pavements at noon in order to get a good view! We headed to the tooth relic temple (supposedly Buddha’s tooth is in there), but me and Robbie couldn’t get in because we were wearing shorts and showing our shin bones (we thought knees covered would do work). Violeta joined us for some tea testing in a local shop until the others got out. The streets were getting more and more crowded, and the rain continued to pour down, so some of us decided to go back to Colombo on the bus a bit earlier than others. Well at home in our homestay, it was our youngest malli’s birthday, and he had loads of cousins (we guess) visiting. We spent some time with them, then collapsed on our beds for a good night’s sleep.  

Elephants on the streets of Kandy

Man-made lake in Kandy

Edit: Don't know what's going on with the picture positions in this post, but I've spent half an hour trying to fix it but it's not doing as I'm telling it to, ARGH! The perfectionist inside me is crying

When I met the Sri Lankan president

First of all, we 'met' the Sri Lankan president on Thursday. Well, not really met, but it was the international youth day with a ceremony in an indoor arena in Colombo. Eight of us got VIP-seats at the front as we 'represented' different countries: Sweden (me), Spain (Violeta), N. Ireland (even though no one was n. Irish), Jamaica (Sinead), Hong Kong/China (Amy & Xin). The ceremony itself wasn't too exciting, mostly speeches in Sinhale.  

Highlights:

• Different Sri Lankan dance shows
• Getting VIP seats when the other volunteers didn't (haha) 
• President walking past us and doing a Sri Lankan greeting (Palms together underneath chin while saying "Ayubowan" 
• Soundcheck guys. They kept insisting on soundchecking in English even though they were quite bad at it. "One. One. Tchwu? One. Check. One. Tchwu. Tee. Check. Double up. One?" *With loads of pauses looking up with a heavily confused face expression*
• They filmed the whole thing, with loads of close-ups on the 'foreigners', and apparently we were on the news later in the evening

(Unfortunately no pictures from this as we couldn't bring them in due to security reasons..)

Afternoon off

Yes, it is now confirmed. We are going to have to leave our lovely orphanage and get relocated to other ones. But we don't know where yet, so we have this afternoon off. We're gonna try and find some cheap iPod speakers, because we really miss music, and some Sri Lankan man skirts (sarongs).

Imagine the freshness and freedom in one of these

Pretty busy bus ride on the way there

Yesterday at the Sri Lankan home for birthday celebrations was an experience. After 1 hour on two different buses, we were in the middle of nowhere. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming. There were 6 of us (all 24 of us could obviously not be invited. We were the chosen ones haha), and the girls did the mistake of getting there hungry. But Robbie and I remembered that in Sri Lankan culture you leave after you've eaten, the socialising comes before, so our bellies were filled with delicious, yummy rice and curry. Everyone were having a really good time, Arrak quickly consumed, and joking about cultural differences and so on (banter), until they asked: "Are you staying the night?". Huge miscommunication, as we thought they'd sorted out transport for us home, but they thought we didn't want to. After an hour of frantically calling different tuk tuks, taxis, vans, friends (it's apparently quite impossible to find transport after midnight so far away from the big cities), our host jumped on a motor bike into the jungle darkness and came back half an hour later with a minibus. Success! What a host. Got home a bit late and one massive experience richer.

Socialising, birthday girl Natasha to the left (will be having a baby in a few weeks!) and Mr DJ to the right. Volunteers from left: Robbie, Rachelle, Faye, Harriet & Yasmine

Saved by a magic minibus

Tomorrow there will be no projects as there is a big national youth day in Colombo. Even the president will attend. I'm well excited.