Today was a very memorable day for the team indeed! It was Poya Day here in Sri Lanka which is a national holiday celebrating the full moon. Along with everything else, the school was closed. As such we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to begin the task of painting the school, something I had been looking forward to for many months. The team had already decided on a plan for a design on the main side wall and the back wall along with the interior of the school building. So at around 7am we arrived at the school, pots of paint and rollers at the ready. Outside, Anna, Aimee, Katie and Matt began the work of painting the sky blue base coat as this is going to be the backdrop for our jungle theme. Armed with a roller, Matt did try to assert his masculinity but the girls showed him that women can paint just as well as men!

Inside the school, Jack, Natalie Faye and I started work on stenciling both the English and Sinhala alphabets onto the walls. Needless to say Sampath took a leading role in organizing the drawing of the beautiful but rather complex Sinhala alphabet. I was working on penciling the English alphabet onto the roof beams. This was a lot harder than it looked for someone who is 5ft (and half an inch) tall. Stood on the teachers’ desk with my arms stretched to their maximum capacity I just managed to reach. By the end of the morning, the outside wall had been painted sky blue and the sun on the left side of the wall had also been done. Inside, both alphabets had been drawn on and painting of the English alphabet had also begun with us all taking turns to do a letter each.

It was a really enjoyable morning. I felt really proud of the building that we had all worked so hard to fund and the building we are all trying so hard to make into a really valuable community building. It was wonderful to know that others felt this way and allowed us to realize this by letting us paint the building how we have chosen. Having visited Rassendeniya and Gandarawatte and seeing the work of the previous teams, it was really special to know that we are able to leave a part of ourselves on the building for people to see and enjoy for years to come, especially since that building has come to mean so much to us all even in the short amount of time we have been here.