blog 9.....

hello!!

Quick question...what do you think do people want to just see photos and a little bit of writing or should i write lots too??? feed back would be good...

Right so don't think i have written a blog for 3 weeks now.

Teaching is now back up and running mostly in full swing, taught grades 1, 2 and 3s lots and split older classes with Alan - As it is a new year at school (school year from january to august) there are brand new grade 1s to the school...first class with them and 3 already cried - didn't realise we were quite so scary...may take some getting used to! As a welcome to the new grade 1s the old grade 1s (now 2s) put on a concert for them with songs/dances, speeches (weird for a grade 1 concert but sri lankans do love speeches) and a small parade - with a band wearing something close to green tartan...

day of grade 1 concert...

amazing coconut tree at SGV

love this photo of the

grade 1 mums in their beautiful saris

　
Teaching is now back to normal as sports meet has come to an end...we managed to make it back to UMV to watch the finiale of the sports meet...like a mini olympics! each house had to make there own hut...the winning house had made an amazing boat out of palm leaves - they could even sit on top of it, was insane! During the sports meet there was an arranged cricket match between UMV (Tris, Finn and Jo work here) and SGV (Emer, Alan and i work here)....it was great fun but sadly SGV lost!! Tris and Finn have been coaching the UMV team and are unbeaten so far!! We also managed to watch some athletics here...the kids are soooo FAST and don't even train and its around 30degrees sometimes...no idea how they did it...really wanted to join in too...

SGV v UMV cricket match

final day of sports meet

As sports meet has been on there was not a lot of teaching in January, so at Mhiripenna Emer and I will help from some children painted our english classroom!! keep in mind that this classroom used to be white with posters....

some of the pupils,

head of english and emer at our beautiful wall

Emer and the boys painting the first layer

 

and is now yellow and green (much to Tris and Finns disapproval) with animals (including bambi), fish, numbers and alphabet...not going to lie it looks pretty amazing - mainly due to emers awesome artistic skills on the drawing!! Hopefully it will make the kids want to come to our lessons...or just distract them...or distract Emer and i...



After painting the classroom one day Emer and i walked to the beach literally 400 meters away and ate our rice packets from lunch...we met some fishermen who offered to teach us stilt fishing...we still need to go along there to actually do it! they also showed us a small shark they had caught and put in a rock pool! We bought 3 very fresh (still alive infact) fish off one man to eat...mmm

man we bought our fish from

We have also had our first "music night" with the 6 of us (Jo, Alan, Emer, Tris, Finn and myself) and it was held in our house - at last we managed to make it look nice enough to have people in it! As some of you probably know i personally am not musical at all but everyone else was amazing! Tris and Emer sung songs they had written themselves and played the guitar, Finn also played the guitar with some pots and pans and drum parts and Jo and Alan did some great sing songs!
　

tris, finn, emer and i in our kitchen for the meal -tidy and with food for once!

Jo and Alan singing!

 

Last weekend was fairly busy - we met a girl, Fiona, from Blairgowrie scotland for lunch and listened to all her amazing stories about sri lanka. Then on Sunday we went to our "sri lanka ama (mum)" house for lunch. She owns the highland ice cream shop in Unawatuna so as Emer and i love the ice cream there so much we have got to know her very well so she invited us to her house for lunch, where she cooked amazing rice and curry, taught us to make egg rolls (sri lankan short eat...rottie things...) and we met her amazing family (husband, 1 son and 2 daughters) and her crazy dog - Bruno!!
　

me and the amazing highland ice cream family!

Last Friday was independence day = holiday, emer and i decided we would go for a cycle to the rock temple close by...we took a small detour to the really pretty mangroves (still finding so many new things even close by...)....then my bike chain broke completly...first thought of Emers was " ok kirstin you get on your bike and i ll push you as hard as i can down the hill and see if you can make it back some of the way..." hahaha we were about 2km home...as you can guess i didn't get very far and Emer very quickly caught up with me...so new plan "lets find some rope in this jungle..." ...only some old rags...oops they break -fail no.2! so genius use of the chain to tie on to the back of Emers bike while i held on to the other end on my bike...Emer cycled pullling me and my bike along (hard work) while i hung on scared for my life haha! We made it back to the bike shop with a lot of funny looks, got the bike fixed by a lovely man who didnt even want to charge us for it - kindness of strangers!

sadly no photo of this bike trip...

All and all the last few weeks have been great and sri lanka is still as amazing as always!

Although Emer and i are both very excited to see our parents and sisters in April! Hope they are too!

Hope everyone is great and having fun!

kirstin xxx

p.s is that too much writing????????? FEED BACK...

p.p.s Dear Kirstins Gran, Kirstin has continued for the past while to accept cups of tea regularly, happy days, mission nearly complete. On another note you are now on my list of legends for the nicest most thoughful xmas prezzie ever, i listen to her whilist i write letters, cheers! love to home, Emer x
　

blog 8

hello!!!

so first 2 weeks back at school teaching since last term. it is a new year for teaching here so things have been fairly slow at getting started, time tables all over the place but think its just about up and running now!
thought i would just chuck a few photos up for you all to see. big highlight the last 2 weeks was our well wash yesterday up rumassala hill!!! absolutely loved it!! felt cleaner after a well wash than a shower - so refreshing!!

January in schools here are packed with sports as they dont do them any other time of the year so this month we have seem some cricket matches, netball, running races and more to come.

the boys arranged a cricket match, against st pauls school from london who were touring sri lanka, to play the team they had been coaching at UMV:

running races on the road outside SGV:

kids watching the races:

"dolls houses" - made of saris by the new grade 1 parents. they are used to welcome the new grade ones as a cross over point between leaving home and joining school:

emer, Lady (the amazing school dog) and her puppy (name still not sticking...been tibs, boxer, sebastian - sebie or bassie for short...i like bassie). he is so cute! lady is a great mum too, a snake was just outside where they sleep and lady was so fast to chase it off and save her wee puppy - emer and i watched from the balcony...:

Jo, Lachmee and myself heading back to Unawatuna after our well wash:

Emer and i playing in the sea in our saris:

Hope everyone is great and having loads of fun!

Also thank you so much to all of you who helped me to raise the money to come out here, i am so grateful and having the most amazing experience, thank you!

Love kirstin xxxxx

hey emer here. quick note to kirsts gran- she is now readily drinking tea and eggs are no longer a problem. mission complete! ha!
LOT'S of love back home to everyone and hope that the snow is slowly disappearing (although we're jealous!!) miss you all, Emer xo

christmas holidays

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, hope you all had a great new year and Christmas!

back from travelling now had an amazing time getting to see some more of Sri Lanka. it is really nice to be back and have people in the village recognise you and ask where we have been. start teaching again this week, excited to see all the kids again. also came back to a nice surprise to find lady (if i have not said before she is the school dog that we named and love) has had a wee puppy!!! he is so cute, still to think of a name. anyway pretty packed full holiday so will just put loads of photos and a rough idea of what we were up to.

emer with lady when she was pregnant just before we left:

emer and i left first and went to tangalle, tissa, monaragala then to Arugam bay where we met Tris and finn, lasted about a week until we met them.

so tangalle: we just chilled out on the beach and "learnt" how to play Karum (sri lankan board game - a bit like pool but smaller and using your hands). swam a bit although the waves were insane and splashed out the last night to stay in an amazing hotel right on the beach. drank ALOT of banana milkshakes!

tissa: ye took the bus from tangalle to tissa, through all the paddy fields further east and inland. first thing that happened when we arrived was the yala national park touts convinced us to get off the bus at what they said was tissa, but really wasn't. it even said in the book not to fall for these people but sadly we did...oopsies! so anyway we escaped them and ended up where we were planning on staying. the place we stayed had bikes so emer and i took them everywhere we went. Tissa was definitely one of my favourite places, it had a massive lake with "bird island" in the middle, wasn't too touristy and an amazing big market. we cycled up to the lake and ended up getting a free boat ride to see all the birds on the island, it was beautiful, pelicans on the top of trees that looked far to small for them! oh i also managed to pop the tyre on the bike we borrowed so emer and i did some sri lankan bike riding...both on one bike, i sat at the back and held on to my bike that needed fixed. we took it too some lovely man who shared some mango with us...

we arranged to go to yala national park at 5.30am one morning from tissa. hopped in our fairly old looking landy and headed for yala...fingers crossed our photo copies of our residents visas would work, after much persuading at the gate we manage to get in a local price yah. it was amazing! we saw 4 leopards! some in the distance but one was so close. our driver stopped under a tree and grabbed my camera from my hands, we looked up and this leopard looked straight back at me as if he would eat me...ahhh, he then ran away...we also saw some elephants, peacocks, crocodiles and loads of other birds. one of the best things though was getting our land rover well and truly stuck in the mud - i will just show you pictures for this as you probably wouldn't believe how stuck we were if i told you...we had to be pulled out and we very lucky as no one usually gets to get out of the trucks in yala (we did to help push...):

looked even worse from behind

　


monaragala was really just a stop off point before heading for arugam bay but we did go for a really nice walk up "peacock rock", covered in rubber trees!

Arugam bay: stayed in a palm leave hut on the beach! very basic and had a rat friend but loved the place to stay. we literally chilled out very majorly here and didn't do a lot - ate my first beef in 3 months...and it rained quite a bit.

our hut was on the left side

from there we heading via monaragala again to Badulla in the hill country. that was an amazing bus journey through all the tea plantations on cliff edges, exciting! Badulla was great too! we walked to Dunhinda falls and then further down the river to a place we were shown was good for swimming - it was gorgeous, small waterfall and pools, was some weird crab things in it but loved it all the same.

dunhinda waterfall

swimming spot...

from Badulla we took our first train ride and we were all like over excited kids on Christmas - we loved it! you can just hang out the windows and doors and it has the most amazing views ever as it travels fairly slow! we headed for Ella! here we all had some sickness times but recovered pretty past... we stayed in a really friendly guest house called rainbow inn and walked little Adams peak through more tea and ella rock! both had the most amazing views at the top over the Ella Gap.

view from little adams peak across to ella rock

we then took another train to hapatale which was amazing, felt like the highest place in sri lanka (which its not...) you could see for miles, the town was basically built on the top of a mountain. we met a lovely sri lanka girl walking along the railway who invited us all to her house on a tea estate for some tea, so we did and met all her friends and family. all the children took us to see there temple where we were blessed and then we played loads of games with them. they were all so sweet and invited us back the next day for lunch, so we did this too, the food was so yummy and the family so kind and welcoming, we played more games! was so nice to meet them!

we also climbed liptons seat from here - liptons tea - man from Glasgow! i know i keep saying everything was gorgeous and beautiful, this was too, one of the most beautiful but its true this country and amazing! after we climbed liptons seat we went to have a tour round the tea factory and then our driver took us to see this nursery school he sometimes goes along to, the kids were adorable but so squashed in to such a small classroom, there were 60 kids from babies to 5/6 years old and only 1 teacher.

liptons tea!

emer and some of the nursery school kids

we thought we would be adventurous from Haputale and ignore the book...so we hopped of at a random stop and hopped that there would be somewhere to stay.....there was nothing!! we left again...
Nuwara Elyia - coldest place we went to! was very strange turned up and it was fairly like home...they call it "little England". it was cold, everyone wore hats and big jumpers, there was a winter market, we could see our breathe, there were christmas lights all over the place, golf courses, strawberries, redish pavements, no mozies...all and all a very unsri lankan! it was amazing to be cold though. we met jo and alan here and had some lovely meals with them. we played tennis twice and a lot of pool, we also arrange to go to horton plains national park to "worlds end" - big cliff basically! once again amazing views and a really really lovely walk through the park!

"worlds end"

view from the top...

kitugala - we got the bus here via hatton. here we went white water rafting...just planning on doing it the one day and leaving but ended up loving it so much we stayed and arranged to do the harder longer route the next day! great fun! even stopped at the side of the river ditched out raft and then jumped in the rapids being thrown all over the place and swept down. it was just so nice seeing everything around us too, first big river i have seen in sri lanka and it was very very pretty....(if any of you know the film bridge over the river Kwai, well thats the river we rafted on...under that bride).

ok this is at the top of admas peak (read below...cant move these pictures very well...)

adams peak on the right

Dalhousie - we met jo and alan here to spend christmas with them! we had a really lovely christmas - up at 2am to climb adams peak, 5200 steps apparently, we got to the top at 5.30am and caught the sun rising!!!! stunning (new use of beautiful words...)! the top of the mountain was packed but it didnt matter! we arranged a secret santa for the top of adams peak, so after carrying our presents up there we all opened them and hopefully loved them, i love mine - a coconut knife with a hand painted by jo red handle, cant wait to use it! after we got back down about 9am i went for a swim in the river which was freeze but refreshing...then we all slept! for christmas dinner we had a BBQ mmmmmm!! played some games after dinner!


from dalhousie we were pretty indecisive on where to go next, ended up spending the day in Hatton and then catching the night train to Hikkaduwa via kandy and colombo....wow well we left at around 12.15 at night and arrived in to hikkaduwa around 9/10ish am... Emer and i stood for the first 4 hours as the train was so so so so so so packed people sleeping all over the place and unlucky for us we picked a very bad place next to the toilet which then decided to leek....nasty! it was an experience...haha, i am glad we did it though!

hikkaduwa - right on the beach, very touristy, lots of surfing, hot compared to the hill country we had been in...had a great time before and over new year. tried surfing once, no lesson just got a board and had no idea where to start just ended up body boarding on a surf board, made it on to my knees....was good fun though and realise we are not far from there at all so may go back and learn to do it properly...
now back and amazing to be here...even with all the washing we now have to do...

hope everyone had a great christmas and thank you to everyone who sent me presents and cards will write back to you all very soon! lots of love kirstin xxx

BLOG 7:

for some reason i am having major memory failure today...cant really remember what has gone on the last 2 weeks... so here goes:

emmmm this week in Galle there has been cricket on (for what may be the last time for professional cricket there), Sri Lanka vs West Indies, in a five day test match. So we went along Monday - to see my first ever professional cricket match, learnt lots from Alan sitting next to me and watch Gayle (west indies) get his first 200 runs which then turned into 300+ which made him have one of the best test cricket scores ever apparently...well anyway it was good to see and then rained at times throughout the week so was rained off and was a draw...i think!

aswell as cricket we have been to our next door neighbour, Govindas wedding party last Saturday night. He has just built a new house in for his wife and so we had a look around his amazing massive house and then sat in the garden to have a meal. The garden looked so pretty it was all lit up and there was a band. The food was amazing! we didnt stay quite long enough to get involed in some sri lankan dancing...We had however bought new saris so dressed up for the occation which was good fun!

govindas his wife at the right end (ment to put the one with govinda too but got wrong one oops...)

at the meal in the garden

emer and i have made 2 visits to one of our favourite cafes in the last 2 weeks, called sahana - we thought it was called richlands tea but thats just a promotion sign that seems bigger than there name sign...its on the water front heading towards Galle. Both times we walked which was very nice. The first time was at the weekend and we ended up "helping" push a fishing boat into the water and went in to a scappy (my dad would be proud..) where the man ended up showing us his goats and chickens (unfortunately we had no camera with us as it was a spur of the moment kind of thing so no photos). The second time we went was last wedesday as it was a poya day, we went to just chill out and drinking banana milk shakes..mmm! the weather went crazy when we got there though saw the rain coming for us and then boom thunder/lighning/rain and we had to sit inside..place was shaking. we also felt cold...

its actualy been crazy weather a lot here recently...yesterday it rained soooo much when we were trying to get home from Jo and Alans friends house. The playground is now covered in giant puddles. yesterday Emer and i went along to Mhiripenna with Jo and Alan to visit there friends for tea and biscuits, they live in this amazing 100 year old house built in the colonial times.

teaching the last 2 weeks has flown by. 2 of my favourite things i remember these last 2 weeks were taking both grade 1 classes out to the playground with there chairs to sing songs etc - they were slightly wild but think they enojyed it which is what counts i guess. the other thing was when we were teaching grade 2, we were reading them a story and pretended to lick some cake on the page, one boy laughed so much he fell of his chair which then ment the whole class laughed even more - it was just really sweet!
we have tried to enforce the naughty chair with grade 3s in Mhiripenna as they are easily the most wildclass we teach - emer resorted to taking the naughty kids books which they love as they started to find the naughty chair entertaining...ahhh!

well im sure theres loads more to the last 2 weeks but i really cant think...should write it down...
but anyway we have practically finished teaching for this term as term end tests start which we are not involved in and classes get all messed up...so we are off TRAVELLING!!! Emer and i are finished a bit earlier than the boys so we are just going to head of and meet the boys later. The plan is to go East along the south coast some more then up the East coast a bit ended up in a surfing place called Arugam bay. Emer and i are going to make our way up there slowly and have lots of stops - hopefully go to Yala national park and see some elepants! From Arugam we are going to head inland towards the hill country and travel around there for a bit - see some nice places, waterfalls, walks, bridges, white water rafting etc... before we head off to Adams peak (sri pada - famous relgious moutain, 5200 steps, 7km walk, temple on top) for christmas day. we are hoping to walk up Adams peak super early so we can watch the sun rise at the top - fingers crossed its a clear day...so lots of travel plans and so excited! will be away for a month so no internet and no blogs for travelling time but will do a round up of it all (if i remember) when im back!

hope everyone is doing great at home and your all looking forward to christmas! xxx

blog 6:

so this morning we woke up to a giant roller behind our house flattening the railway - ment to be up and running again by Janurary which means no need for alarms then as trains go by at 5 anyway... (may feel like home next to the railway...). then this morning i had a very sri lankan breakfast of my favourite sambol (slightly too spicy) and bread, mmmmm. heres an old picture of me attempting to make it on a proper grinder:

the last 2 weeks have flown again...freaking us out a little how fast it is!

teaching:
Mhiripenna is going great, really getting in to the swing of things there, even if it ment having to create a naughty chair. kids in grade 3 learning vocab and alphabet:

emer and i took 2 private lessons with "the rottie families" (rottie is a food that they sell not some kind of nasty name we have created) kids, both of different ages and abilities so was kind of tricky but we will see how that goes...working progress...

i really enjoyed helping out in one of the sri lankan english teachers classes this week at SGV, sat at the front with grade 4 boys who seemed to be picked up everything with a little encouragment. I also really enjoyed being in one of Alans 9B lessons where there is a girl who doesn't say a world, i sat next to her to try and help her along, still didnt say much but you could tell she understood and was laughing about things which was really nice!

at SGV assembly this week it was so sweet 4 grade 2 boys went up to "stage" and were all passing the microphone back and forth between them and gigglying majorly, until one just decided to keep it and they sang the sweetest song - so cute! wish i had had my camera...

Emer, alan and i also helped out at Sunils (a english teacher at SGV) english tution school this friday. We went on a really gorgeous (although wild) bus journey to get to his house/tuition school where we spend 3 hours teaching 53 grade 5 kids who were so willing and keening to learn - really enjoyed it! after the teaching sunils wife had made a feast for us with a european twist, so yummy!

meal in sunils house after teaching - sunil and his family in the back ground

alan reading piggy wiggy

　other things that have been going on these last 2 weeks:

we were invited by a family (whose son goes to school at UMV and we met when we danced in the parade...) to there house for lunch last weekend. so we turned up where we said we would meet them, then hopped in the dads "sri lankan tractor" (also want to point out we were wearing our sairs in the tractor haha) which took us to there house in the middle of no where but was so beautiful to get there and when we were there! the drive there was halarious it was like some sort of wacky race! i actually got a stitch in my side (or what i thought was a stitch - shows how unfit i am..) because the tractor was so shakey...haha!
the dad and his tractor (we sat in the traylor like bit at the back):

when we got to the house we ment the family, had a drink then they took us for a walk around there area - so so beautiful, walked through a rubber tea plantation and watching as shane (the son who is at school here) smacked jack fruit off the top of trees.
rubber trees:

me and the family off on our walk:

lunch being cooked on the brick fire

oh i forgot to mention last weekend i got up ealry (for the weekend) and cycled along to see the stilt fisherman - unfortunately i didnt see the guy i had met before (or he was on his stilt and i couldnt tell) but was really nice to watch it, although wasnt the best day and started raining. had a nice cycle afterwards too:

i also had another cycle this week where i thought i woudl be brave and try out my lack of exercise here and cycle up this massive hill (well felt like it was massive), made it to the top but did feel the most out of breathe i have been yet, then started to head back down...then realised i had no breaks....dun dun dun! not good, emergancy feet down stop, luckily realised before i got too fast...haha.

some other amazing moments i can think of the top of my head (should actually start writing things down or i forget everything...): emer and i had a movie night as she got sent a usb of films over (watched fantastic mr fox), so we moved our bed side table and squashed our beds together to watch this film...it created so much space in our room and for anyone who has seen the film "step brothers" it was seriously like the activity space they make when we make there bunk beds... so funny (or at least was for us...). another funny thing happened yesterday on our way back from the beach (which was so nice to chill out although it rained a bit...), we bumped in to our local entertainer...chooti/sampat, almost every time we walk around the village we bump in to him and he either hides under his umbrella, puts his thumps up and always has the same conversation - about where he lives on rumassala hill with the bats (emer loves te bring up the bats...). anyway yesterday we saw him first for once, so emer screams "hello" and he jumps a mile then bursts out laughing (forgot to say he has a voice like he has been sucking helium), then he just randomly bursts into song and makes us film him singing, was pretty funny and sure he just loves to entertain!

so dancing, volleyball, arts and crafts, singing, badminton etc all still going on aswell.
All going great! hope everyone is great at home and all having fun! love kirstin xxx