Day 10:
The day begun with a “lie in” of 7:00 am which was followed by a breakfast of noodles. We headed to tzu chi school for 9:00 where we were greeted by the buddies to practice our puppet shows for the performance in front of the younger years. My group rehearsed “the elephant and the leopard” which was a Sri Lankan twist on “the tortoise and the hare”. Both teams 2 and 3 performed puppet shows in front of some of the school. Team 2 performing traditional English stories whilst team 3 performed a piece on turtle conservation. Max, the ventriloquist, did his own performance which left the audience laughing. During the show, a family of monkeys overlooked us from a gap in the ceiling. During the time at the school we talked even more with our buddies as well as meeting new Sri Lankans such as the other teams buddies. I was touched when my buddy generously gave me his school badge that he had won for science. After saying good bye to our friends, we headed back to Janoda foundation to continue with our project work. Through detailed painting and physically hard work in the hot sun we strived even closer to finishing our projects of the sandpit and the murals. The boys especially put in a huge amount of effort as the girls were whisked away to collect and try on saris ready for our leaving ceremony tomorrow. Unfortunately, this took longer than expected as we all had to squeeze into our sari tops but everyone was delighted to see the final look. After a dinner of curry (of course) we headed for the shops to purchase small gifts , food and friendship bracelets for our buddies. We finished an exhausting day with biscuits and a reflection activity.
From Ruby