Today I spent the day working in the English Language Teaching Unit in the University of Ruhuna.This morning was particularly interesting in terms of our cultural education as we were greeted by the English teachers watching a large celebratory ceremony with the President on TV. The day, described as ‘the second independence day’, was being celebrated as the liberation of important areas of the Eastern Province from the LTTE (Tamil Tigers). The afternoon was spent assisting an intensive English language lesson. We found that the students are quite shy and generally need encouragement to start talking. As they were working through some set exercises on career choices we went around the group helping out and informally talking to the students. On this more comfortable one-to-one basis they were friendly and welcoming and really excited that we’re here. After drawing the students out in this way we ended up having a really good class discussion on the skills necessary for, and relative virtues of, various careers, with everyone getting involved. The teacher of the lesson expressed his gratitude for our participation and it was incredibly rewarding to see both teacher and students enjoy a style of lesson different from the structure usually adopted.