WOW, time is flying, one month already!

We’ve settled down relatively well and now have a routine of sorts.

Last Sunday’s church service was taken by a visiting Pastor from India.  There was some English in his service, yeah!!! We joined him and other pastors from Colombo and Pastor Sam for lunch.  A milder chicken korma curry was ordered for us.  We were amazed the Indian Pastor found the Sri Lankan beef curry too hot.  It seems different areas of India have varying amounts of chilli in their meals. We are trying some delicious foods. 

Visiting Pastors at Rio

 In the evening we again met with the visiting Pastors for ice cream at one of the popular ice cream parlours, Rio.

YUM!!!

 This is the girl’s ideas of delicious food.  Emma’s eyes were as big as saucers when she saw the ice cream sundaes and made a good attempt at devouring it but needed help finishing hers. 

Sarah had a great time too. On the way to the ice cream shop we popped into an International Trade exhibition which was on for the weekend. A really big deal for Jaffna as the logistics of getting everything here was huge. Remember that even though we are only 300km north of the capital Colombo, it is a 12 hour journey by road. This time it was where Jacinta’s eyes were as big as saucers.  In a short period of time, she had found a rechargeable hurricane lantern for the blackouts, pillows and towels.  She could have easily had a day there.  Jacinta felt in heaven sleeping on pillows which aren’t made of kapok or quite possibly  rocks. Probably kapok as rock would not smell as bad. For those who have had a sheltered city upbringing, look up kapok!

Always on the shopping list is ice cream.  We are working our way through the range at the local shop.  One of the favourite flavours is a pink ice cream/ice block called faluda. No idea what it is and it taste too good to be brave enough to find out.  We have a competition each week to see who can pick the best ice block.  The girls have made a trophy out of a recycled water bottle for the winner. It is taken very seriously and we all have to take a bite out of each others selection and vote and you can’t vote for your own choice

We are recycling boxes into dolls houses, water bottles into pencil holders, curd pots store hair ribbons and ice cream containers for food storage. We need to protect our food from some little animal (rat?  squirrel?  don’t want to think what else?) that manages to rip through plastic packets and eat our food.  We need to eat a lot more ice cream to get more containers to store our food safely.  I have a trap but have not set it yet ,to be honest I am afraid of what I may actually catch!

A little it of Oz, staff member Marjorie doing small talk at PD day

 We are challenging ideas and introducing different ways to teach at the school and it is being well received.  Teachers are trying new strategies and we are receiving positive feedback.  Friday, a public holiday was a staff development day with its own resident professional development presenters! We showed strategies and characteristics of a great teacher, and features of a great lesson.  Ideas of punishment, using the cane and negative teaching where challenged and some other options presented.  We had group discussions and came up with solutions.  Teachers and students are used to an “expert” talking at them all day (not too sure how we fit into that category) and they passively absorb what is said.  It was a very challenging process trying to get feedback, akin to pulling teeth but we are making headway. It was a very productive day and the first of many.

Jacinta presenting on the day

Attitudes vary; from computers are a bad influence - we don’t want the children to know about the outside world, to how do you turn it on, to those who can make and present a basic PowerPoint.  We’ve moved away from the idea of teaching everyone to be confident with using PowerPoint in the classroom as enough resources are not available at this stage.  We are now focusing on using classroom strategies to encourage student thinking and good teaching practices.

We also had a bit of fun and indulged ourselves a little. We did an Australiana theme and presentation for Australia day, with flags and stuffed toys and green and gold balloons all over the place that we carried over with us from OZ for just such an occasion. Hard to see what they made of a Rolfe Harris version of Waltzing Matilda with accompanying slide show. I think “jumbuck” and “tucker” threw them a little. We had a competition following the song with Australiana style prizes. They went over well. And I think it helped our home sickness a little.

Take care everyone and have a happy Australia Day, and please remember your countryman (and woman and kids) a long way from home.