Wednesday 14th July by Oliver
Dinner With Chattuhri and ChammaniMe and Claudia woke up early to teach at the Fishery College in Tangalle. Last week’s class went really well and word had spread since our last visit as our class had grown from 20 to 50 students. We moved into a bigger room and continued our work from last week on directions (north, east west, south, left, right etc.). One of the problems pointed out by one of the college’s representitives is that some fishermen get caught from time to time in illegal waters. We thought it might be helpful for them to know some English phrases so that they can communicate with the police if they get caught. The class were very enthusiastic, which was quite an achievement as it was a two-hour lesson.
After this we did a bit of shopping and returned home and prepared for our 1:45 lesson at the Moraketiara School. Today we taught 15 Grade 10 students about directions (as it was fresh in our mind). The pupils were very competent with this and it seems like they have studied it before. Unfortunately, as the headteacher couldn’t provide us with details on what the pupils had learnt we were not aware of this beforehand. We are revamping our teaching strategies as there we now have 6 teachers in the room (1:2.5 teacher pupil ratio), which is unneccesary. We will be speaking with the headteacher tomorrow about unlocking more rooms so that we can seperate the pupils and teachers into different tasks.
Olivia planned to play cricket with some children in the afternoon but as only one child turned up it was canceled. Instead, we relaxed, caught up on some reading and looked forward to dinner with Chattuhri and Chammani (two local girls we met through Ishan).
We arrived at Chattuhri and Chammani’s house at 7:30. We were shown around the house and taken into the kitchen where we made hoppers. We then sat down to a delicious dinner–curries, rice, hoppers, pineapple, chilli, fish, watermelon, string hoppers etc. After dinner we sang songs, Claudia tried on a Sari and joked about. We were taken home in Chattuhri’s uncle’s bus and had a good night’s sleep.