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One word; exhausted!!
I am going to waffle in a minute, but if you want to ask questions or leave comments, please feel free to do so! There should be a comment box below this or something and I will get back to you when I can :)
The past few days has been brilliant, honestly. I am not just saying it, it really was. Where shall I start?! We didn't really stick to the timetable, it is typically Sri Lanka's way, to change plans at the last minute or delay things (reminds me of myself, though!) The training sessions were interesting, there was a lot of information and discussions. For anyone who knows me, of course, I was really nervous about the 10 minutes presentation! Standing up in front of an audience is not my thing, especially when it's like other volunteers. Hah, but it went well. I decided to teach the names of the parts of face and body, drawing the parts on the blackboard. The feedbacks were positive and there were also suggestions of what I could do if I had more time. I met Amila, the Deaf Sri Lankan teacher, and I adore him! He is so lovely and funny, and it was great, because I really got to see the Sri Lankan culture, for example, he asked me and the two other girls where were our watches? We said we don't have on, that we use our phones etc. He was really shocked and said we need to get one. I said some of the male volunteers don't have one as well, he was like they are men, they don't need one, but women do!! He also taught us how to eat with our hands. It was just brilliant meeting him. It was my favourite part of the whole week, his presentation. It was very animated and energetic. Amila also created a sign name for me! I will film the sign name, it is hard to explain. I went to Sri Lanka with no sign names, and now I have two! Duffy came up with the second one, it is 'titanic' because Amila said I looked like 'the lady from the Titanic'. I also started to make friends with the hearing volunteers, I think after the Deaf awareness training, we all started to feel better about communicating with each other. And they all were lovely! Some were from England, some were from Scotland, and one guy was from Denmark. A brilliant mixture of different cultures, along with the Deafies, two were from France, one was from Belgium and two were from England.
The picture is the view from my room at the homestay, jealous much?!
On Friday 8th February, it was the jungle weekend! The journey to there was long, and bumpy! But the scenery was beautiful. We stopped at 'The Food City' to buy some snacks, and it was a wee break as well. In the evening, when we arrived, we had our dinner and chilled. Talking, playing games and just having good craic. Went to bed about 2am.
On Saturday, we went white water rafting which was amazing! The thrill was so good. I really enjoyed it, and afterward, I was really craving for sandwiches, like we would have at home, after an outdoor activity but nope, it was rice, again. In the afternoon we went trekking which was tough, but at the end we cooled off by doing confidence jumps into a river. It was good fun. The scenery was just breathtaking. Trees everywhere, river, it was so peaceful and calm. In the evening, we had a BBQ and again we just played games and chatted till the early dawn.
Er, on Sunday, we had some team activities, it was cringey when we had to name our teams and to come up with cheers for our teams, but admittedly we really got into it! Team Leaping Monkeys!! The games were really fun and we all had a laugh. We returned to our homestay that evening and we had DOMINOES PIZZAS, ah, western food finally. A week of eating rice, noodles, a variety of curry, it was just nice to have 'my food'. It was YUM!
I am really enjoying myself, it is quite an adventure already and the placement hasn't started yet. Bring it on! :)
Hope all is good at home!! :) xx
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