23rd December - Day 22

Today is the end of our project.

Jo and Vicky are spending today heading home.
Becky, Cat, Nicola and Van are spending today heading to Marissa on the South Coast for their onward travel.

Jo and Vicky arrived safely home around 7.30pm

22nd December - Day 21

This morning we had breakfast at Shanta (Cheif Commissioner)'s house. Watermelon and papaya juice to start, followed cereal, toast, roti, milkrice, sausages, fried eggs, onion curry and jaggery (a fudge like sweet often used to sweeten milkrice). Plus pineapple! Shanta also introduced us to her family including a new dog, which turned out to be a highly excitable sausage-dog puppy!

From Shanta's we returned to Yamuna's to pick up the things we had left there. There we ate cake and fish pastries and drank tea!

Back to HQ we prepared for our evaluation of the project. We had noted down things all the way through the project, but we split them into sections and divided them up between ourselves. We also sorted gifts and cards for some of the people in Sri Lanka who had helped to organise the project for us. Our evaluation went well, lots of positives and ideas - the SLGGA are looking forward to the next team's arrival in 2012!

Straight after the evaluation we went to change into our saris. Skirts on and blouses done up we looked at the long lengths of fabric and were quite pleased to see the arrival of some of the Guiders who offered to dress us. We had to choose between Indian and Kandian style to wear our saris. 4 of us went for Indian (the normal style you see) and 2 went for Kandian!

We had been invited to a Christmas Party at the HQ, so we went down to join in. They all looked quite surprised that we were all in saris, but were pleased to see us. We were invited to join in with some carol singing... we sang the carols which were in English and listened to those that were in Sinhalese. We were given chocolate cake and joined in with a game of musical chairs!

Just before the end of the party we were joined by some local Guides who were carol singing.

After the party we went for dinner with Mangala and her daughter. We went for Thai! We chatted lots about the differences between the UK and Sri Lanka and how this changed guiding in each country. It was interesting to learn even more about how guiding works in Sri Lanka and the problems they face when trying to make any changes to the organisation.

Back in our dorm room at HQ Vicky and Jo packed ready to go home the next day. They gave the rest of the team presents, all wrapped ready for Christmas Day!

21st December - Day 20

This morning we ran our second TEFL session for the school children. However it seemed word had spread because a lot of the children today were teenagers!

We had 33 participants today, with about 15 returning from yesterday. Again we played lots of games re-enforcing what we had done yesterday and extending it a bit too!

The Hokey Kokey was so popular yesterday it got repeated today - the children were definitely starting to learn the words, especially the words for their arms and legs!

We played a version of ladders with fruit and vegetables - adults and children all played!

We worked in teams and tried to score lots of points.

We were also presented with a card by the Guides who's campfire we had joined last night.

We packed all of our resources and presented the NTC with some of them to keep and use both in the centre and in the school.

Back on a bus we were this time headed for HQ in Colombo. We arrived just in time to put our bags down and were whisked back out again. This time we had been invited to a Little Friend's Christmas party!!

On our arrival we were greeted by two Little Friends each. We each received a Christmas present and a garland of white flowers, before being taken into the party. An arc of chairs had been set out and more Little Friends were waiting for us there!

The girls sang some songs and performed a Sri Lankan dance for us.

We were then invited to run some songs for them before the girls performed a ballroom dance for us. The girls then invited to join in with both the ballroom dance and a hip-hop dance too!

Santa arrived shortly after. We decided Santa here looks scary!! He wears the same red suit and red hat, but carries a stick with pink balloons on top. He also wears a slightly scary white-skinned plastic mask complete with attached white beard! Santa provided gifts and sweets for everyone, although he did get mobbed by the girls on his arrival!

Dinner was hoppers, and we got to see them being made too! We then spent some time talking to the girls about Little Friends and Brownies in the UK, and they attempted to teach some of us how to dance Sri Lankan style!

20th December - Day 19

First TEFL session for children today.

This session was for children (aged 3-5) who attended the school at the Training Centre, and their parents, to learn English. Everyone did a basic introduction saying their name, how old they were and how many brothers and sisters they had - this enabled us to see that we had some with no English at all and others with a basic understanding!

The group had 39 people in it, aged from 10months old to 64years and was a mix of boys, girls, men and women. Everyone was really enthusiastic, joining in with all of the activities, games and songs. Having learnt some body parts, numbers, fruit, veg and colours the group decided their favourite song was the Hokey Kokey - which got repeated several times in the session!

Throughout the training the odd mother and child would disappear and then reappear with the child in a yellow dress or red shorts, until all of the children from the school were dressed in matching outfits! They then performed two dances for us, a girls one and a boys one - they were very cute!

We stopped for lunch and the group thanked us for the training. They hadn't intended on returning after lunch it appeared, although we had planned for a second session. After a bit of discussion several of the parents seemed keen to return after lunch for more English activities!

The afternoon's session only had 15 returning participants but they enjoyed it just as much as they had done in the morning. We were also brought some food to try by one of the families - mankavum (battered greengram), athirasa (brown stuff - not sure what!) and ambrella (a fruit that tasted a bit like fresh peas).

We offered to run another session tomorrow morning, but they again looked confused - who knows if anyone will turn up!

Straight after the afternoon session we had been invited to join a campfire with the Guides who were camping at the Training Centre. These girls were also the ones we had seen at the flying up ceremony in Colombo a few weeks ago! The girls took it in turns to lead a song and the patrols each performed sketches. We were invited to join in and lead a few songs as well.

19th December - Day 18

After breakfast with our homestay families we said goodbye as we all piled back into a bus - this time headed for the SLGGA's National Training Centre near Colombo.

Our journey took us along the coastline to Galle, during which we kept our eyes open for the famous Sri Lankan stilt fishermen. It wasn't great weather so all along the coast we saw empty stilts. Just before turning off to join the expressway we spotted one man on his stilt fishing - success! We piled out of the bus onto the beach to take some photos. He was catching fish and then throwing them from his stilt to a man with a bucket on the sand!

We were soon spotted and offered a chance to try sitting on the stilts. Cat went first, Nicola got carried in by the fisherm with Becky and Van following shortly afterwards!

Slightly damp we got back on the bus to the NTC. We arrived just after lunchtime and ate the packed lunches that Sirini had made us. We then investigated our rooms. We were in the 'Officers' rooms - two rooms with three beds and a small bathroom - only one sink didnt work and one toilet leaked when flushed! We erected our mosquito nets and sorted our resources for the next day. We went through our session plans and sorted out who would run each part.

Dinner time arrived too soon after lunch, but was it was nice to see a dinner of hoppers and egg hoppers with butter and jam.

18th December - Day 17

Today we were taken sightseeing by our homestay families.

We were all picked up, along with the Guides we were staying with, by the school bus. The Guides had got a bongo drum with them, and almost instantly the singing started - pop songs, sinhalese song and UK Guide songs - all to the beat of the bongos!

Our first stop was a temple, home to a 7 story tall statue of Buddha and some very ornately painted cave tunnels. On every wall were pictures, paintings, carvings and statues all depicting Buddha's previous lives. There was also a hidden room underneath the Buddha which is where treasures had been stored to stop outsiders finding them in the past.

Our next stop was the Kudawella Blow Hole. The blow hole occurs naturally, shooting water up into the air when water travelling in two different directions collides and the water is forced upwards between the rocks!

Our third stop was a lighthouse. This lighthouse had been build by the British many years ago! We climbed the 222 steps to the top and then climbed up to look at the light in the tip of the tower and to look out over the island and coast. It was very warm up there though so we soon came back down ready for lunch!

Lunch had been made by one of our homestay families - rice, vegetables, dahl and chicken, all to be eaten with our hands! We managed fairly well and our families all looked impressed that we hadn't ended up wearing much of it!

From here we went to the beach - we weren't so sure about swimming here as we hadn't brought clothes to swim in and everyone else was swimming fully dressed. We agreed that paddling to our knees would be fine and just as we went to paddle the rain came down, it was really heavy rain and we got soaked - might as well have gone swimming fully dressed after all! Now soggy we opted to go to an internet cafe to update the blog and to check our emails.

In the evening Sirini (one of our homestay Mums and a Guide Leader) had us all over to her house, we had to perform UK songs to her while her daughters filmed them (and added a bongo beat) in order to teach her Guides later. From here we walked to Damanthyi's house (the school's English teacher) as she had invited us over for dinner.

Dinner included woodapples with icecream (we decided this was better than the woodapples on their own), rice, dahl, salad, vegetables, pineapple and papaya. We were then invited to hear her children and Sirini's perform some songs - which ended up with us teaching them just as many, this time accompanied by not only the bongos but also a guitar!

17th December - Day 16

Up very early this morning as we had to be at the meeting place for 7.30am. We had breakfast in our homestay families... although Cat and Becky's breakfast wasnt ready till 7.55am.

We met at an environmental centre just after 8am and then got into cars to the beach. We were split into 6 teams, four teams collecting plastics, one collecting rubber/leather and the last collecting glass. Everyone was given sacks to fill and sent off to start collecting. It was extremely hot on the beach, especially after how cold it had been at Adam's Peak. The girls all worked really hard collecting everything - there were lots of lightbulbs, flip flops, plastic bottles and even the odd bottle labelled 'poison'. We filled sack after sack and delivered them to a truck that was emptying the bags so we could refill them.

We collected for an hour before stopping to reapply suncream and find some shade - everyone else joined us and we all had yoghurt-in-a-bag, which we found quite entertaining! Then the press arrived and we had to go back outside with our gloves and sacks for a photo shoot, initially collecting rubbish and then posing with the Sri Lankan Girl Guides banners. Maybe we will end up in the newspaper!

The girls asked us to teach them some songs, so all 30 Guides, their Leaders and anyone else who had been helping (the government's environmental team) joined in learning some songs. The Guides also taught us some more songs!

From here we headed to Vicky and Jo's homestay house for lunch and internet - time to catch up with writing the blog! Dinner was at Sirini's house - we had time to plan for extra training sessions next week and then enjoyed a lovely meal. Jo went to the toilet and spotted a huge spider - a source of entertainment for the next 30 mins!

We went back to our homestays and to bed!