Unfortunately, I had no connection to the internet with my laptop for the last days. Due to that this report is a little late. I will start from the beginning:
About to give my first lesson I started Saturday at 7:30. Ultimately the TukTuk came at 7:45.
Arrived to the temple there was a small opening ceremony.
Reverent Vipassi told me right afterwards that he would be in Colombo for the rest of the day so I had to take over the German lessons already in the morning.
Although I had some insight to the lesson the week before, I had to get some more impressions about the performance of the students. For the given circumstances, this performance is just as it in Germany: between excellent and rather poor. I hope I succeed to reduce these differences a little bit during the next weeks.
At the end of the day, I felt quite tired into my bed.
I stayed at my place on Sunday morning and got picked up by the boys at noon to drive to the Mirissa Beach. The water there was refreshingly cool and it was a great fun for me to swim between the high waves.
The following days of the week I spent again in the centre.
For the start of the new school year, the pupils of the centre will receive a kind of start-up package with paper and pencils. Of course, the number of materials required in these quantities can´t be obtained individually, so the aim was to count the materials supplied in bulk for each individual student. An example of this is the stacks of 50 sheets of paper. This task kept us busy during the week.
As a distraction from work we ascenated the hill behind the temple together with the two secretaries and Gayan, one of the boys which accompanied me at this time. During our little hike, I made acquaintance with all kinds of native fruits here, which were shown to me joyfully and offered for tasting.
For me it was like a council game, whether I had to eat the outside or the inside of the fruit. At first I was mostly wrong. A short stopover also led us to a kind of mourning celebration, in which a farewell was taken, by a deceased woman nearby. This will be followed by more.
As Reverend Vipassi told me already after my arrival in Colombo, some KIT students were in Matara at that time. They were looking for a new construction project for “Engineers without Borders”. They had already visited the temple on Sunday, but because I wasn´t at the temple that day, we had not yet met. For this reason, I agreed to have lunch together on Wednesday.
At about 13:00 I was picked up by them with a van at the temple and after another brief visit to the site I set off with them to the city. As it turned out in the course of the talking, I had already met one of them before.
After the lunch the group had actually planned to go shopping, as some of them went to Colombo by bus in the evening. The chance to spend a while with people I could talk German to seemed good and therefore I decided to join them. However, the plan had already been crossed at the next crossing as we were in a police check, as result of which the inspecting officer did not accept the driver’s license. So we had to wait a while. However, after paying a small fine, we continued with the same driver. After a short detour in a supermarket, I finally parted again from the group, as my accommodation was only a short distance away from it. The evening ended again with a short football game at the ground.
Finally, this invitation landed on my desk. The children of the Preschool had rehearsed for the special occasion some small performances like dances and a small performance. They presented them proudly.
They then sat down in a row on the stage and everyone received some rice and curry on a lily pad. As a guest, I was allowed to sit down with them. In the case of the crabs, which were to be eaten with one hand, however, I failed.
As a small supplement: I unfortunately do not know exactly on what day it was, I was persuaded to try one of the many local dishes, to eat by hand. I consider for the first time it was o.k.