6th - 9th February 2007

Tuesday 6th February

Today was my last day teaching at both Siri Sumana and Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage. At the former I did a few “he is…/she is….”, “he has…/she has…” exercises. I’m still finding that 30 minutes with five different classes doesn’t work all that well. Even more so because at Siri Sumana I’m usually left alone with the class. This makes keeping order harder than at Ranapanediniya, where even if I’m alone, the open plan layout of the school means another teacher is within sight. It’s most unsettling for me when at Siri Sumana a child cries, and I can’t find out why.

At Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage I did the colour word search, The Rainbow Song and hopscotch. Discipline and lesson structure are both a problem here. Kids seem to come and go from the lesson at will, but there is always a core of pupils to work with. I feel these children have been rather unlucky with my time. For one reason or another there have been several occasions we’ve not been able to have a class here.

Wednesday 7th February

This morning was my last teaching before I leave. I was at Ranapanediniya School this morning and I personally donated a new medical kit to the school, and then set about the day’s teaching. I helped grades 7, 8 and 10 to write penfriend letters to Melbourn Primary School in Royston.

At 12:30 I was present for the inaugural meeting of the English Literary Association when committee members were elected and there were speeches by the English teacher, K. Premasiri, and by the principle , who’s name I’ve misplaced. After this there was a ceremony for me, in which all those children present (about 100) sang “You are my sunshine”. One student from grade 10 then made a really nice speech about me, before giving me a present they’d collected together for and bought. It’s a little statue of a fisherman. The assembly was finished off with the students all reciting a Buddhist chant.

This afternoon at Nirasha School I did a few exercises including Opposites and Name the Animal. I also taught them the rhyme about 10 naughty monkeys jumping on the bed before finishing off with the Engines Engines book, which I know they enjoy.

Thursday 8th February

Tonight I went round to Bindu’s where a small party was to be held for me. I bought a bottle of arrack for them all, and we played a bit of karam. I’ve got quite average at this over the past few weeks. We finished off the night with them all singing and percussing a few songs popular songs in Sinhala or Hindi.

I really like the way people shake hands here. It’s far softer than the statement of masculinity I’m used to in England. Here it’s sometimes more like holding of hands, thank shaking, such as with Sugat. Actually, men are more physical with each other here, and it’s nice. A hand on the shoulder, or a head massage, or even casually holding hands, is not uncommon.

Friday 9th February

I finished packing early this afternoon, so spent an extra ½ hour with the children at Nirasha School. I had some photos I’d brought from home of friends and family, so I taught the children sentences such as “This is Heather”….”She is 31 years old”….”This is Jack”…”He is 10 years old”….”Heather is Jack’s mother”.

I’ve been really pleased by the food here in Sri Lanka. I've written a much more detailed personal blog, including lots about the food. But I dind't feel it relevent to Help Lanka, so it's not on here. Email me if you want to know anything more...

albert

3rd - 5th February 2007

Saturday 3rd February

This morning I went to Morathuduwa Temple to meet Gothama, the monk as arranged last week. We sat outside, just near the white dagoba, and meditated on a mat for about ½ hour. We then had a chat about various things to do with Buddhism.

I went to Rathgama’s Saturday market after the temple to gather information for the This is Rathgama project. I took a few photos and made a recording of sounds of the market which I hope will find it’s way onto this website as an audio file. There are about 100 stalls selling fruit, vegetables, spices, fish, kitchenware, cloths, linen, household goods, toys and incense.

Sunday 4th February

Today is National Day, celebrating the anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948. Last night Nalinda said, “Tomorrow everybody hate (sic) you!” I know he meant it as a joke, but I’m not proud of my country’s colonial past, and I told him so. It was easy to explain actually due to his choice of t-shirt – red with a big union jack in the middle. I basically just said to him that I would never been seen wearing that t-shirt. I think he got my drift.

I snorkelled again today and I swam among loads of wonderful fish, including a school of barracuda and a fish about ½ metre long, predominantly electric blue, with a bright yellow patch on each side. But the most amazing thing was when I was swimming along looking at nothing in particular, only to find a huge turtle, the size of me, swimming underneath me!

This afternoon on TV there were a few films, some Indian, some Sinhalese, set in colonial times, with natives pitting their wits against the Brits. It’s good to see some Brit-bashing movies..!

Monday 5th February

Going to the beach to see the fishermen at 7am this morning I saw loads of kids walking to school. It was only now that I realised that school days here aren’t shorter than in England. They may finish at 1:30pm, but they’ve been at school since 7:30am!

After this morning’s teaching at Ranapanediniya School I went into Galle with Nalinda and Manju to get a few bits and bobs I wanted. There are some things I’m really finding a strain now I’ve been here nearly 4 weeks. One is people asking me for money after telling me something useful. For instance, today in Galle we went into the train station to find out times of trains to Colombo. I thought the smartly dressed man who explained the options to me was an employee of the station but no. He was a tour guide, and after our conversation he wanted some money. Now, I know that people here are generally worse off than I am, and so need the money more. But it’s not that that bugs me. It’s the deception of altruism that depresses me.

31st January - 2nd February 2007

Wednesday 31st January

This morning I was at Ranapanediniya School. It was the last day for 5 of their teachers. There is a policy in Sri Lanka that after 8 years at a school, a teacher is transferred. It’s an interesting idea I think. Some like it, some don’t.

I took 4 classes, accompanied by K. Premasiri. With grades 3 and 7 I did The Fruit Song. Only with the latter did I attempt to get them singing it as a round, and I recorded them on minidisc. With grade 9 we continued the telephone dialogue from their exercise book we started looking at last week. With grade 11 we looked at a couple of new words in 3 tenses: the infinitive, the past and the past participle.

This afternoon I was at Nirasha and using the atlas gave them a few exercises based around countries, such as “Sri Lanka is near India”, and “Sri Lanka is not near England”. They don’t know where many countries are on the map, so even the basic geography lesson is useful for them.

Thursday 1st February

Today, being a full moon, was Poya Day, a national Buddhist holiday. So I visited a school of a different kind this morning – that populated by fish. I took my snorkel, and it was wonderful to swim freely among hundreds of beautiful fish.

After my swim I sat watching the crowds enjoying their Poya Day on the beach, and noticed that those playing cricket, and swimming were predominantly male. I asked Nalinda and Manju, and they confirmed my suspicion that even on a special day like today, most girls will stay at home. That reminds me, very few, if any, women smoke in Sri Lanka, and most, if not all, men do.

This afternoon I watched a subtitled Indian film starring Anil Kapur on TV with Mrs. Mendis. She was amazed that I didn’t know who he was. At breakfast time, I had seen, apparently on every channel, Buddhist monks reciting tales of the Buddha’s life in Sinhala, and chanting in Pali.

This evening at sunset Nalinda, Manju and I went to a temple about 12km out of Rathgama so I could get a good grasp of what happens on a Poya Day. White clothing was popular among the devotees, but not exclusively so. People were wandering around making offerings, by lighting sandalwood incense sticks, and coconut oil candles. They would also water the roots of the bo tree. This tree, as is the norm, was on a raised bed. So watering it involved pouring water into a funnel at shoulder height. Before the evening mass started we all stood in a huge circle around the temple, and offerings were passed round everyone before being taken into the temple. These offerings were mostly lotus flowers, candles and incense sticks.

Alas I’ve had no joy with Sri Lankan radio stations. I’ve done my best to contact them and arrange a visit, but it’s not going to happen now. Pity, that could have been really interesting. Maybe next time…

Friday 2nd February

I was at Siri Sumana School this morning. I did an exercise about Poya Day: “Yesterday was Poya Day. What did you do yesterday?” Although all five grade 4 classes are of mixed abilities there is a stark difference in the abilities of some of them. The first group were a bit unruly, and as I’ve previously said, this can make things very challenging, particularly when the resident English teacher is not there to help keep order. Despite their behaviour they soon grasped what the day’s lesson was about. The 2nd class however, just could not get it. I had blank faces for 15 minutes, and I felt rather inept at not being able to come up with a way to help them understand.

This afternoon at Nirasha School I did a colour word search, followed by The Rainbow Song, hopscotch and the Engines Engines rhyme book.

I’m having my own pronunciation problems now. It’s taken me a while to get the difference between“…tha” and “…ta”. “Pahatha” means “at five”, as in the time I usually meet Indiga in the evening, while “pahata” means “down”.

25th - 30th January 2007

Thursday 25th January

At Ranapanediniya School, K. Premasiri was absent today, but I feel I made good progress with the classes I took. With year 6 I did my male/female friends exercise, and with both years 10 and 11 I did something slightly different. Using the school’s electric keyboard I taught them “You are my sunshine” and went on to give a couple of exercises based on the weather.

This afternoon I was at Baranasooriya Boys' Orphanage, where I covered quite a bit of ground. I used the big atlas I brought over, to do the “Where is …..?” / “…..is here.” Exercise. I taught them some common nouns using my flashcards and we played hopscotch to learn numbers.

Friday 26th January

At Siri Sumana School today I intended to use my “What’s the Time?” OHP sheets, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Firstly, I hadn’t realised a two socket adapter would be needed for the English power cable. Once we had power, I found the classrooms were too light, and there wasn’t a suitable blank wall space. I’ve told Nalinda and he’s going to speak to the principle about finding a suitable place for the projector. So, instead I did some Time exercises using the blackboard. But because I had to write it out for each of the five 30-minute classes, I had to make the exercises fairly brief.

In fact, I’ve found that because there are five grade 4 classes, and each only gets ½ hour, I’ve not made as much headway as I have at the smaller Ranapanediniya School, where lessons are 40-minutes long. Also I seemed to pitch my first few day’s exercises too high - many of the children don’t actually have the vocabulary to understand the topic, so I’ve had to adjust my lessons as I’ve gone along. It’s a shame there are so many classes, because given a whole morning with a single class, I’m sure I could make more progress. It would also give me chance to vary the exercises, and maybe throw a song into the mix as well. But in 30 minutes, there’s just not time.

I’ve still got problems with naughty children. More so at Siri Sumana School than the other schools. I’ve found that a fairly good way to deal with them is to make them stand up and read out, or sing, whatever we’re working on alone. One thing that does work well, with good kids and bad alike is giving them exercise to write in their books that I can then mark. The prospect of a red tick, and a comment seems to really get them writing!

This afternoon at Nirasha we did some Friends exercises, and before a torrential downpour played hopscotch outside.

Saturday 27th – Tuesday 30th January

During these four days I went on a trip around some of Sri Lanka’s historic sites in the Cultural Triangle, which embraces Kandy, Dambulla, Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura. I hired Lahiru as my driver. I can highly recommend you make a similar journey if you are reading this as a prospective volunteer in Sri Lanka and you have enough time. I’ve written a far more lengthly summary of the trip, which I can email to you if you wish.

22nd - 24th January 2007

Monday 22nd January

This morning I was at Suri Sumana School, and I did an exercise based on the past tense, in which I asked the pupils what they did at the weekend. It was the induction day for the new first years today, and the principle invited me into the main hall for a while to take a few pictures of the proceedings.

In the middle of the day, Nalinda and I visited Devapathiraja College, and Rathgama Library, delivering some books donated from the UK.

This afternoon I gave the students at Nirasha an exercise based on the Galle trip on Saturday. I had prepared worksheets for them to fill in the gaps.

Tuesday 23rd January

I was at Ranapanediniya School this morning. I assisted the English teacher, K. Premasiri, with a telephone dialogue exercise with grade 7, and I finished the lesson with a Word Chain, asking each student in turn to come up with the next word (last letter – first letter, that sort of thing).

With grade 6 I sang a song I’ve written to be sung in a round, like Frere Jacque. It’s about fruit, and I’ve cunningly called it The Fruit Song.

With Grade 11 we did a past, present and future exercise. K. Premasiri actually has a more in depth knowledge of English grammar than I do. I know, and can explain to the children, how and when to use different verb forms. But he knows all the group names, like the infinitive, and present perfect better than I do. He told me it’s 3 years since any pupil passed their English O-level. That’s really sad. A few of the children in each class seem to be really enthusiastic to learn from me, so hopefully this run will come to an end this December.

I had a chat with the principle at Ranapanediniya School, to find out what they were planning to do with Help Lanka’s £100 donation. Apparently they’re on the lookout for a TV to use with their video, and they want an internet connection.

This afternoon was my first proper teaching visit to Baranasooriya Boys’ Orphanage. With a couple of exeptions, the level of English among the boys is lower than elsewhere. So I spent quite a while on learning just the English numbers with a few boys. I also did a few basic, “My name is…”, and “My favourite…is…” etc.. I spend quite a bit of time on the phonetics of English words and I had an interesting pronunciation challenge with one boy when working on the numbers. He couldn’t say “six” (“sig”), but could say “sixteen”. And he couldn’t say “fifteen”. I spent a long time with him on this. First I got him to break down the word to “f-i-f-teen”, but when putting it all together it would come out as “sibteen” or even, “sixteen”. After much patient encouragement, he almost got it right, so I don’t think he’ll be scarred for life by the experience.

Tonight I went to a baby’s first birthday party with Indiga. I took a teddy and some soap for the birthday girl, who today would get her first taste of rice. It was also a first for me – this party was the first time I’d seen men and women at the same social gathering, but after a while I was whisked off into the men’s room (one of the children’s bedrooms, it seems) where we had nibbles, and drank arrack (think coconut whisky).

The lack of English speakers at the party didn’t bother me, but what did make me feel uncomfortable was the men, as they started to get drunk talking at me, apparently forgetting I couldn’t understand. I didn’t feel intimidated, but it did become a bit of a strain, maintaining a false smile.

I felt more comfortable after a while when I left the room and went and watched television with the women and kids. The men had curry and rice at about 10 pm. It was one of the best dhals I’ve had.

I read in an English language newspaper today that certain types of polythene bag have been made illegal. This is quite encouraging, to see environmentally conscious policies being implemented here in Sri Lanka. Despite this law, it’s a shame so many eateries serve food on a plate covered with cling-film to save on the washing up. It’s also a pity people don’t have more of a sense of what to do with litter. A lot is just dropped, wherever and whenever. I’ve been really saddened to find that the rubbish I have collected is just on the patch of land at the back of Mrs. Mendis’s garden.

Wednesday 24th January

The English teacher at Siri Sumana School had asked me to bring along some exercises about friends today so I duly did. I prepared an exercise describing both male and female friends, what they like and where they live etc.

This afternoon’s class at Nirasha was a washout because there were so many absentees. Instead I used my time to prepare some OHP sheets for Time exercises with Siri Sumana School on Friday.