When Georgette, Hannah W and I first arrived at Kirelawela this morning, we were greeted by only two children in the preschool. We were unsure what to expect for the rest of the day but it soon became clear that our lesson plan might not stretch as far as we’d hoped when being applied to two boys. One boy, Dilshan, loved drawing, and we had a wonderful morning drawing pictures of fish and under the sea themes in chalk. My personal favourite was Dilshan’s giant pink dolphin.

During our wait between the preschool session and the after-school club, the three of us sat and spoke to a young girl who lives next to the school, named Danushka. She asked us about England and was incredibly friendly. The conversation then turned to the 2004 Tsunami. This is the first time that I’ve spoken to someone so personally about how they, and the people they love, were affected by the tsunami. It was incredibly touching that she was so open with us and we’d only just met her. Her stories were very sad but I was very moved that she wanted to express her feelings to us. We also received a very warm welcome from her aunt, who served us lunch and showed us her wedding album (this seems to be a regular lunch time event now).

We were also very grateful to be taken by Danushka to the Perahera Market in Dondra. Last weekend we were lucky enough to have enjoyed the Perahera festival, which is followed by a week-long market. Danushka led us around a huge number of stalls, selling almost everything you could think of. I really enjoyed seeing something new and walking around for the hour, as we sampled some new sweets and put our bartering skills to good use. To thank Danushka for being so wonderful and giving us a great day, we bought her a bracelet; it was so nice to see her face light up when we surprised her and to end the day feeling like we’d made a new friend.