day 6&7

We've been back working at the school for the last few days; the days are structured differently now as the school term is over. This means we've been running a holiday club each day opposed to lessons then games. It could have meant utter chaos but thankfully we were dealing with fewer children this time and had made sure we were very organised!
Once the children are divided into their different age groups we run various activities across the school. Now we're working with smaller groups we are far more able to successfully get things done and so some sessions have seen absolutely wonderful work produced:
Beautiful butterfly pictures, glittering name pictures and sheets and sheets of colouring are amongst some of the creations clutched by children at the end of the day.
We also feel a little responsible for the worrying amounts of elephants now roaming around Columbo, but once they take off the masks we believe them to be fairly harmless. The lions however, are a different matter entirely. They can sing a lovely rendition of 'In the Jungle' though...
Another hit as has been the Eston Park printer. They brought this fantastic gadget where you take a photo on a digital camera and plug it into this tiny little black box and a sticky-back photo slides out! The children, who adore having their photos taken anyway, utterly love this. We've been sticking the photos onto pieces of card and getting the children to write their names and other details underneath.
We've also put our weight into decorating some classrooms. We moan at home about the state of our schools but it's nothing in comparison to what some areas of this school are like.
We've set about painting the walls and sanding down the grills that function instead of windows, to rid them of rust and then painting them with non-corrosive paint.
It's very laborious work and very messy (we've all become very good friends with white spirit over the few days!) but all managed to make it a load of fun. Also, I personally have enjoyed it in a very different way to working with the children because it feels good to be doing something that will make an immediate tangible difference.
Tomorrow is the last day that we're spending at the school and so we've all been given the task of trying to prepare some items for a little show tomorrow. Should be interesting...
Katherine

Today was our last day at the school and although we are all very tired and quite ready to go, the general consensus was that we were sad to be leaving. The children were certainly unhappy to see us go and we've all got many promises of letters following us across the ocean, we should all be inundated from the amount of addresses we gave out!
We needed to finish with a bang and so pulled out our wonderful dance routines that we'd managed to perfect (well, almost) over the last two weeks and YMCA-ed and Marcarena-ed our way through a little show.
It was great just have such a laugh with the people we'd spent the past fortnight with and, as always, we were overwhelmed with their exuberance and their readiness to just throw themselves, headfirst, into whatever came their way.
Their were several items, ranging from a beautiful song by two of the Eston Park girls, who both said that they've discovered their ideal duetting partner in each other, (its great- because for them, they've not only formed relationships with the Singhalese but have also really bonded with each other- many had never exchanged more than a few words but are now inseparable!). There was a lovely rendition of 'In the Jungle' accompanied by newly made lion masks and a good few cheesy English dance numbers (the boys' dance medley proved especially amusing)! It didn't stop there though, as soon as we paused for breath the Sri Lankans were up, dancing and singing away! It was fantastic for us all to be having such a great time together, us teaching them and them doing likewise- a wonderful embodiment of what the trip was about. We wanted them to have as much fun as we could manage and, judging by today, we've been successful.
Leaving was sad, but it didn't feel like goodbye. Whether it's through fundraising at Eston Park (back to the bag-packing for them), sending letters to our new penpals or just through remembering the difference we've made to them and the change they've catalysed in us, we'll never forget and, I hope, we'll all keep on 'doing our bit' wherever we are.
This afternoon we took Tuktuks (always exciting!) to Mount Lavinia Hotel, the poshest place for miles around and either swam or sat around for a few hours. Not only was it just a little bit nice, but it was also really interesting to side another side to Sri Lanka. No one place is just this, or just that and its good to be able to hold the two realities side by side in your head. One of the most challenging things I think we'll face returning home is what to do with everything we've seen. A return to normal life is inevitable, but a complete regression to the mindframe we had before leaving would be very hard. It's this getting the balance right; being able to live an affluent life without guilt or shame but not to forget, as a coping mechanism to deal with this experience. If you haven't seen it, been amongst it and poverty is still an abstract notion then the plea of ignorance could almost give you some excuse. But we have, poverty is tangible to us now and leaving that behind when the plane takes off would be a real shame. Now that we know what's there to combat we can get at it.
Let's go change the world.
Katherine