Although spending a day teaching in any of our four establishments is always going to be exciting and unpredictable, in particular, a day in Moraketiara is never forgotten as it is proceeded by an event to remember, before our arrival at the school. The one hour long bus ride to Moraketiara is certainly an experience, particularly for those of us who are accustomed to the slow, country buses which drive leisurely around Britain’s speed-limited roads!On the way to a day in Moraketiara, we can certainly rely on the Sri Lankan public buses to keep us awake and on our toes – none of us have managed to doze off on a Sri Lankan bus as yet! Each trip to Moraketiara has been truly bone-rattling! With unoccupied seats a rarity, more often that not, a journey to Moraketirara has seen us hanging off the bus’ ceiling rails, clinging on for dear life while the bus speeds around each corner, and jumping out of our skin each time the bus driver blasts his horn in preparation to overtake the traffic ahead. The driver’s inevitable determination to beat all the other buses to the next bus stop means that we mostly make the journey to Moraketiara in much less time than it is meant to take. Booming out of the speakers overhead, the duration of the bus ride is accompanied by frantically paced Sri Lankan popular music. On the occasions that some of the girls have attempted to dance along to the music while simultaneously bumping along the roads, the Sri Lankans on the bus have found this an absolutely hilariously comical image – while we would prefer to be laughed with rather that at, its good to know that we have the ability to amuse people wherever we go! Moraketiara itself is an absolutely brilliant place to teach. On my first experience at Moraketiara, the group I was with was scheduled to teach a class of 9 to 11 year olds, who knew little English. After introducing ourselves, we asked the students to stand in a circle. One of our girls stood in the centre with a ball, and directed questions at a particular child by throwing the ball to them. On catching the ball, each student practiced answering simple introductory questions, such as, “My name is…, I am… years old, and I am very happy/tired/excited today”. It was a really fun way to make otherwise quite simple and repetitive teaching engaging. The students had to pay attention because no-one knew where the ball was going next! After using this technique to teach various phrases, we moved on to teaching the various body parts. From our experience, the students tend to remember songs, so we taught “heads, shoulders knees and toes”, which went down a storm. Also, we used various games to check that everyone remembered what they had been taught, such as getting everyone to dance to music (our Ipod speakers have come in handy on various occasions!) and then calling out a body part. The last student to point to the part of the body that had been called out was out of the game. We have found that using competitive games works particularly well for getting the students to really take in what we have been teaching, and by allowing the activities to be as fun as possible, they seem happy for us to teach them in what will soon be their vacation time. Leaving Moraketiara is always sad, because the children run after us and shout “how are you?” (and other things that we have taught them) and follow us, holding our hands to try to pull us back. These students are absolutely lovely, and a joy to teach, but before long, it’s always time to go back to the University, despite the fact that we’d rather delay the manic bus ride and stay much longer at Moraketiara…