Saying Bye

To be dramatic - the end of the first month saw an end of an era! Everyone who was in Lion House when I arrived have gone!

Tammy and Gigi, two amazing girls from Hong Kong (which looks so so beautiful so I think that I will just have to go visit some day!) had shared a room with Hana and I but they both left after 2 weeks.

My first set of roomates! Hana from Republic of Ireland, Tammy, Me, Gigi

Georgina, who I flew out with, and Hana, who arrived the same day, both left after a month. It was very strange for Jenn and I to say bye to them when we had all arrived together. That weekend Jenn and I decided to take it easy and save some pennies by just spending the weekend in Lion House. So on Friday evening after Georgina and Hana left it meant that it was just Jenn and I in the house, both sleeping in separate rooms. The house seemed ominously empty!

We spent the weekend getting laundry done. Which is harder than it sounds!! We have shallow-ish, wide buckets which we fill up with water and mix with regular clothes washing-powder that we buy from the amazing wee supermarket in town called Food City. So we mix the (cold) water to get all soapy and then we put our laundry in there. Let it soak. Scrub it. Scrub it some more. Accept it's never to get properly clean. Empty the water and rinse the laundry out in clean water. Leave it to soak. Rinse it out again. Wring it out as much as possible (not easy when you have dodgy wrist/hand joints like me!) and then hang it out to dry. On a wee balcony there are 3 wooden clothes horses, which run the risk of leaving stains on your clothing, anything light or white a no-go for the clothes horses! There are also a few clothes lines between two pillars on the balcony. Upside of the balcony is that there is a roof over it, so the rain wont drench your drying laundry. Downside is because of it being so humid hanging clothes out there can take anything between 2-4 days to dry properly! The other option is to hang your laundry on the washing lines on the roof to dry. To clarify I dont mean a washing line like at home, I just mean a line of rope (its not rope, dunno what to call it!) in a straight line. If you accept the fact that a monkey might steal your clothes, they might get blown off the line and nibbled by a rat, they might end up smelling if any of the smokers have a cigarette on the roof, and if it rains then your stuff will end up wetter than it was when you hung it out - then the roof is the better option as laundry will usually be dry within a day, providing that you put it out before midday and so the direct sun will have dried it by the time it gets dark at 6ish.
So Jenn and I caught up on the joys of laundry. And then we did our own thing like read or write blog posts etc.

On Saturday new folk arrived at our house too, so we were there to greet them which was nice. But on Sunday they were doing orientation so we went through to Hikkadua to sunbathe. It was quite a dull, cloudy day and we only lay out for about half an hour - yet we still ended up bright red! That evening when Nalaka came back he took one look at me and shouted from across the room 'Oh my gosh Claire what happened to your face!' which promptly caused Jenn to cry with laughter. We spent the second half of the afternoon watching Princess Diaries!!

Overall it was a nice weekend!

Tsunami Museum

Near to the Turtle Sanctuary and Hikkadua lies a tsunami museum. Its comprised of two small huts filled with photos and newpaper articles and facts about the effect of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka. There were some very graphic photographs and a lot of it was quite hard to look at. In particular I was shocked by a photo of Galle Bus Station almost completely flooded up to its roof, since we had just been at that bus station the previous week. I also found drawings by children to be distressing. Drawings of people being washed away, drowning, hanging dead in trees or crying looking for lost family depicted in pictures drawn by children present during the tsunami, completely heartbreaking.

Further along the road from the museum stands the statue that can be seen in my photograph. It was built in remembrance of victims of the Tsunami. The statue stands at 10 metres tall, which is as high as the wave was. I found its pose striking as it appears to be holding out its hand as if to stop another wave.

One story was of a train very near to Ambalangoda, which was travelling on the line from Galle to the capitol Colombo. After the first wave the train came to a stop about 200metres inland. The first wave had caused many people to panic and, not fully realising what was going on, boarded the train as they believed it would be safely secure on the train lines. Many other people stood behind the train in the belief that it would shelter them from any more waves. The train track runs along the coast and so when the second wave came the train was hit, killing the majority of passengers on board. That was around 1700 people on just one train. The numbers from this disaster are very hard to comprehend! This is the highest death toll in a train disaster in history.

''The wave caused flooding in the carriages and began to cause panic amongst the passengers. The next, much larger, wave picked the train up and smashed it against the trees and houses which lined the track, crushing those seeking shelter behind it. The eight carriages were so packed with people that the doors could not be opened, and they filled with water, drowning almost everyone inside, as the water washed over the wreckage several more times. The passengers on top of the train also fell off when the carriages were uprooted, and many of them drowned or were crushed by debris. Estimations based on the state of the shoreline and a high-water mark on a nearby building place the tsunami 7.5 to 9 meters above sea level and 2 to 3 meters higher than the top of the train.'' From Here

Sri Lanka had the second-hgihest death toll from the tsunami with a confirmed death toll of 35,322. 

An injury toll of 21,411 

and 516,150 displaced persons.  

Agriculturally 259 square kilometres of paddy land was destroyed

Countless fisherman had their boats entirely destroyed.

Over 1000 orphaned children

Nearly 4000 children lost one parents. 

The effect of the tsunami is an ever-present part of this area of Sri Lanka. On the coastal road driving from here in Ambalangoda through Hikkadua, a road which we regularly drive along, the roadsides are full of ruined houses that were never reclaimed or repaired, and also numerous graves and memorials. 

The museum talked about how, as Buddhists, many Sri Lankans believed that the Tsunami was deserved and brought upon them by karma. It left many people confused as to what they had done to deserve it. 

Many families never found out what happened to their loved ones and still consider their lost family members to be just that: lost. It also discussed how so many parents, mainly mothers, are to this day in denial that their children were killed, and still believe that they were simply separated and unable to find their way home. That they were taken in elsewhere on the island and are still alive and well and that they could still be re-united. Heartbreaking. 

Some quotes from the museum:

''I felt like killing myself after this experience. It was a kind of violence within myself that I can not describe. Why? Is this our karma?''

''It was the sea that gave us everything to live our lives. It was the sea that took all that away and ultimately it is to the sea that we have to return to take up our lives again.''

''A dead child can never laugh again''

''We heard this strange thunderous sound. We thought it was the sound of bombs but it felt like doomsday.''

Being here has brought a sense of realism to the effect the tsnami had on people, I have had conversations with co-ordinator Nalaka, Kanti who cooks for our house and some of our tuktuk drivers about their experiences. One of the afternoon projects is to teach and play at a Tsnami school, which is basically a youth centre built near the 'tsunami village' houses.  

Monks!

Smiles- proof that our lessons must be pretty enjoyable!

Teaching the monks at the temple in the morning has quickly become my favourite part of Sri Lanka! They are lovely sweet boys but we have great fun with them too, we tried playing hangman with them but they got confused so their favourite game to play at the end of the lesson is Bingo! Although we don't always use numbers, sometimes we will use words instead, like it will be animals bingo, or fruits etc. 

We are not joined by another wee boy who comes along to improve his english. There is a considerable difference between his level of english and the monks, presumably because he goes to a normal school where he will receive english classes whereas the monks get all their lessons at the temple. 

And as you can see from the photo to the left - I have gotten a tan! woo

Galle Fort

 On Friday we went to Galle to visit the Galle Fort for the day. It's not too far away so we got a public bus again. Galle is a very touristy spot and inside the fort are lots of shops and places to eat. Outside the fort is Sri Lanka's international cricket stadium where games are often televised.  The fort was built in 1588 by the Portuguese but was then taken over and refurbished by the Dutch and is most commonly referred to as being a 16th century Dutch fort. It was quite bizarre to walk around as it looked nothing like anywhere else in Sri Lanka I have visited so far. The shops were excellent - definitely the best place to go back to to buy any souvenirs from! For lunch we went to a place called Crepe-ology which was beyond amazing! Had the best tuna wrap of my life and then traditional crepe with lemon juice and sugar. Yummy! We went a wee walk around some of the fort walls and it reminded me somewhat of a larger Fort George at home, until you turned around and saw the very colonial Dutch looking buildings!

Smiles!

I thought that I would share some happy smiling photos of my girls at the orphanage, all too cute!

Temple Teaching

After finishing my two weeks of turtle project I started my English Teaching project. My English teaching project was at a small temple teaching 3 trainee Buddhist monks. We go there and teach from 8.30 to 10.30 and then we have free time until its time to leave for the orphange at 2.30pm. We had some rules for the temple, naturally we had to have our chests, shoulders and knees covered but we also are not allowed to touch the monks, address them by their names, or sit at the same level as them. So they sit at benches and we sit on chairs, we can not sit on the benches if they are etc. Our oldest monk is 16 years old, then we have a 13 year old, and then an 11 year old. The youngest one has really poor english and struggles a lot but he is also very cute! He has some serious issues sounding out letters and words and he also has a hard time writing, even something as simple as copying out the alphabet. We wonder whether he has some learning difficulties or maybe dyslexia. The middle monk can be impatient and moans a lot, when he finishes his work he will sit and make faces and silly noises instead of just waiting for us to move on as a group. The oldest one is lovely and sweet and has the best english so sometimes helps us explain things to the younger two. 

Zoe from Ireland teaching

Let's Go Fly A Kite

During tuktuk rides to and from afternoon projects we always see kites flying, and Ashika told me that its kite season just now. The girls at the orphanage always get really excited when they see a kite in the sky and point them out to us, and so for the 'leaving-do' of a group of volunteers they decided to get the orphanage girls a kite! We asked Nalaka about it and he said that people don't really buy kites, they make them! Nalaka made us a brilliant kite with a branch, tissue paper and some glue, and he even made it have a British Flag pattern. It turns out that kites tend to be a boys thing, so that paired with having never had their own kites meant that the orphanage girls weren't too sure what ow to fly it, and us volunteers were pretty clueless too. The only kites I have ever flown have been plastic bags with string tied to the handles! The kites here are pretty impressive too, sometimes they are as big as the boy holding them and they get flown amazingly high in the sky! Luckily for us our tuktuk  driver (my favourite tuktuk driver, he is so sweet!) took charge of the kite for us. The kids had a brilliant time with it. The older girls lost interest after a while but the younger ones loved it, it was brilliant seeing their wee happy faces as they ran along behind it! We didn't manage to get it flown very high though because it wasn't windy enough where we were and of course we had to stay within the orphanage grounds. I had 'Lets Go Fly a Kite' stuck in my head all day!

A little bit behind...

So its currently Monday the 11th of August, and this is my last week in Sri Lanka! Clearly I am somewhat behind with my blogging! The Mirissa weekend I just blogged about happened on the 28th of June!

I plan on finishing blogging for everything that I have done, it's just going to be back-dated a bit!

Mirissa Continued

Jenn with PMGY for Plan My Gap Year

The hotel at Mirissa was amazing and allowed for a very chilled out weekend. Instead of paying for the AC rooms we opted for the cheaper option of fan-only. These rooms happened to be separate little bungalows which I think were much cuter than a regular room in the main hotel building would have been! I shared one with Hana while Jenn and Georgina shared the second. From our wee bungalows we could see the pool and beach. We spent most of the time (asides from whale watching) sunbathing or being in the pool. The hotel wasn't very busy so we mostly had the pool to ourselves! We were half-board so got an amazing buffet option for dinner and breakfast - a brilliant change from the rice and curry we get at the volunteer house! Don't get me wrong, that food is lovely but it gets very repetitive! May have gotten a little red over this weekend, but its ended up as tan so I should be going home looking brown!

 

the pool and the AC rooms behind it

From outside my bungalow, you can see the pool on the left and the beach on the right!

Bungalow!

Mirissa!

For our weekend trip Jenn, Georgina, Hana and I went to Mirissa.  A coastal town teeming with hotels for tourists. The hotel we stayed at had a lovely pool and was right next to the beach, as in RIGHT next to the beach! My Lonely Planet guidebook describes Mirissa as being 'a place so idyllic that only a fool would ever want to leave.' One of the popular tourist attractions in Mirissa, apart form the sun and beach life, is whale-watching boat tours. Although its considered off-season at this time of year (the east coast has better ocean conditions at the moment) we decided that the prospect of seeing whales was well worth the cost of a tour. Our coordinator Nalaka helped find us a good deal and arranged our tour for us.  

We got up excruciatingly early on Saturday morning to get a tuktuk to the harbour and our boat. Or rather, we should have got up early but somehow all four of us managed to sleep in! We were in pairs in two cute little bungalows (photos to follow in next blog post) and none of our alarms worked! The first we knew of morning was Jenn banging on our door telling us that we slept in! And they had been woken up by a phonecall from the man who was taking us to the harbour, telling us he was at the hotel waiting! We got ready in super-quick time and were only 5-10mins away from the harbour so we still arrived in plenty of time. Once we got on the boat we were all handed tablets for seasickness and then given a sandwich for (a very early) breakfast. It took about 2 hours to get out into sea far enough to start spotting whales. It was quite choppy and we got splashed a lot but I found the motion quite relaxing and dozed off for about an hour! Downside of this was that I ended up with a VERY red sunburnt arm, a tshirt tan too!

When I woke up there was only me and one other man left sitting in the original seats at the front of the boat, pretty much everyone else on the boat were feeling seasick and sitting at the back leaning over the sides feeling ill! Once we got out on the flat water it was lovely, calm waters with local fisherman on traditional wee boats floating by, and the sun looked amazing sparkling on the water. 

We were very fortunate and saw 7 blue whales! We even saw one flip/dive (not sure what the official phrasing is but I am sure you get the gist) out the water which was spectacular. One of them was also a baby! It totally fantastic and I am very glad that we decided to go for it! Unfortunately I didn't get any photos, I didn't bother taking my camera out because I was concerned about the salt spray from waves getting on the lens.

the harbour

fisherman 

the harbour as the sun went down

Cricket!

Cricket is a big thing in Sri Lanka, and our own coordinator Nalaka hopes to play preofessionally some day and currently has plans to play in England. Every so often there is a Plan My Gap Year cricket match and this time was played against another volunteer group which is also based in Ambalangoda. Instead of going to morning projects we walked to a cricket pitch and spent the entire morning playing cricket. I've never played or watched cricket before and had the rules explained a few times but still didn't quite get it, or rather didn't get what was so interesting about it! It was a fun morning nonetheless and I enjoyed taking photos of the games.

          

A House Party

The next week was another volunteer's 21st birthday so we had a house party at Lion House where we got some local guys in to sing us some songs (in english). It was a good laugh and they taught us a song about Hikkadua. 

Day at the Beach

Actually did this before the Yala trip but I forgot to blog it! There is a town called Hikkaduwa about a 30-40min tuktuk ride away from Ambalangoda. Hikkaduwa is a lot more touristy than Ambalngoda so it has some restaurants where they serve WESTERN FOOD woo. We went through there to the beach on Thursday because no projects were running due to it being Poya day, a celebration of the full moon. Since Fathers Day was coming up we all posed for a photo to send home.

Ella & Yala Weekend: SAFARI TIME

 

On Sunday afternoon we started our safari of Yala National Park. Nearly 130000 hectares Yala is the biggest and most popular park in Sri Lanka. It was a great afternoon and great experience however I most definitely enjoyed Uda Walawe more. Yala was very busy, with a LOT of jeeps all following one another, with each driver trying to give their passengers the best view and so on. It somewhat ruined the experience and I feel that if definitely did not encourage animals to come out into the open, so many jeeps racing around doesn't exactly make for a peaceful scenario!
We didnt see any leopards, which the park is famous for, however we did see a black bear. Apparently there is only one bear family in the whole park so this was very lucky, although we didn't see it very well or for very long due to the high number of jeeps congregated!

The bear