I set off today for the seaside village of Kirelawela by myself this morning, my partner feeling unwell and thus having to take the day off.
Where the prospect of teaching a class of small children by oneself might be a little daunting to some, I was looking forward to seeing what could be done on this day. As I arrived at the school, the children were in the middle of their morning worship, in an outer shrine at the school. I greeted the two teachers who set me to work straightaway. I taught the children a new song to them, but a familiar one to me: the Hello song, which they took to with noticeable curiosity. We then went through other songs we all knew: Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Incy Wincy Spider, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which they sang with a lot of enthusiasm. The rest of the morning was taken up with an altogether different activity; the teachers and I prepared a fruit salad for the children, while saying the words of the fruits in English. In this fruit salad went three pineapples, eight mangoes, several bunches of bananas, and five apples. This took us a long time to cut up, and at the end the children had the fruit salad for their dessert!

During the lunch break, I was following the teacher around the village. She lead me into what I assumed was a friend’s house. Little did I know there was a funeral wake taking place at this house, and while it was a little unexpected to see a corpse in the middle of the room, it was almost more surprising to see the relatives smiling and welcoming me into their house, apparently without any signs of grief.

In the afternoon, I had 15 children attend the afterschool club, where we played some ball games, learnt the names of some animals in English and in return made some progress in my Sinhala!

I had a very interesting solo day teaching, with its share of unexpected events. It was a great pleasure going to Kirelawela.