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Published: November 19th 2014
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I think the past week has been one of my best weeks in Sri Lanka so far! Last week at one of my projects a woman came up to me and said "titanic titanic titanic" while pointing at my phone. I played her the song 'my heart will go on' and she wanted to dance to it. We ballroom danced all around the ward and I was getting really into and doing big hand gestures while singing my heart will go on and she was copying me. When the song finished she then requested 'shalala lala' by the Venga Boys. I'm not sure where she learnt these songs!? For the rest of the two hour session we danced to these 2 songs repeatedly and I was SO hot and sweaty, it was probably the best workout I've had since coming to Sri Lanka. It was really nice that she wanted to dance and be active.
On Monday it was my last day at one of my favourite projects because I have a field trip next week. It had been boiling all day but half way through the project it began to pour with rain. I've been here for
over 10 weeks now and I have never seen rain like this. The lights went out and the building we were in flooded. Obviously the men we were working with were no longer interested in the clay activity we were running. We decided to try and distract them from the storm by singing and dancing as some of them were scared of the thunder and lightning. We sang everything from the hokey cokey to the macarena to Alice the camel but it was hard because you could not hear our voices over the sound of the rain! It seemed to work and they all joined in dancing with us and I was quite sad to say goodbye to them at the end of the session.
Yesterday I attended a meditation and creative therapy workshop. The first half of the session was given by a monk who talked us through different types of meditation and explained the benefits. He told us that the brain waves of a person meditating are similar to those of someone who is sleeping. We then had the chance to try three types of meditation. We tried out mindfulness which is where you acknowledge
thoughts as they arrive in your mind but aim to stay focused on your breathing. The second type we tried was mantra meditation where you focus on a made up word such as "om" and every time a thought enters your mind you go back to focusing on the matra. The third type was metta meditation which is when you think loving and peaceful thoughts towards yourself and others. The monk led us through this by saying words that we could repeat in our heads. I found this the easiest type of meditation as you had something more to think about rather than just your breathing or a mantra. The second part of the session was led by a drama therapist. She ran a creative therapy session with us and afterwards she explained how different types of creative therapy such as drama, drawing, dance and play can be used in different situations. It was a very interesting session.
At the weekend we managed to head to Kandy finally! After a rather uncomfortable public bus journey we arrived and had dinner at a pub!! It is the first pub we've seen since arriving in Sri Lanka. I also
met someone who was from Richmond! The next morning we got up early and travelled to The Millennium Elephant Orphanage which is where elephants who have been mistreated and rescued go to be looked after. At the orphanage we were able to ride the elephants, bath them, feed them and sit on their back while they sprayed us with water! After all of this we were given a tour of a factory where they make elephant poo into paper! This was very interesting and they make so many nice notebooks and cards out of it which lots of people bought.
Kandy was not like anywhere else in Sri Lanka. There was a large lake in the center which was really beautiful and the whole place felt very clean. Later on Saturday we went to watch the famous Kandian dancers. We went an hour before the show to reserve our seats. Lots of people had already reserved the best ones down stairs but we managed to get the front row upstairs. However, when we arrived before the show there were people sitting in our seats and all our cardigans were gone. We asked them if they had seen
our clothes and they got very angry with us. We got the man who worked at the theater who had helped us reserve our seats to come and explain to them. There was a huge argument between him and these women who were from Bahrain. After around 15 minutes of heated arguing they stormed out of the theater and we found our cardigans 10 rows back stuffed under chairs! When the show started it was amazing, each dance had a meaning behind it and the costumes were spectacular. At the end of the show two of the dancers did fire walking which was incredible to watch!
After the dancers we visited temple of the tooth which is the largest temple in Sri Lanka and houses the relic of the tooth of Buddha. There was a really cool atmosphere at the temple and they were playing drums and people were lighting candles. We took flowers with us to lay before the Buddha statue. However viewing the actual tooth relic was quite stressful as they only open it for 15 minutes each day and there were too many worshippers and tourists all crowded together and getting angry at each
other. I would prefer it to just be for worshippers only and I would have rather just looked around the rest of the temple.
On Saturday I spotted a church in Kandy and I dropped in to find out if the Sunday service was in English. I was told the service would be conducted in English and Sinhala. When I turned up on Sunday morning I found out the service is only in English if someone English speaking turns up. They translated the whole service for me! There were two hymns and two worship songs. For the hymns they gave me an English hymnbook and I was expected to sing in English while they all sang in Sinhala which was difficult. Half way through the service one of the men translating said "Victoria is here from England today and she is going to give testimony for us now." I was pretty nervous speaking to church full of Sri Lankan people but I think it went well. At the end lots of people were very kind to me and they invited me back next week!
After that I met my friends at the markets and
we wondered around before heading to the botanical gardens. We had our lunch in the gardens and had a walk around. It was very pretty and I enjoyed looking in the orchid house. We then had to rush back to catch the train home. From the train we had some amazing views of the hills and it was a really lovely way to end a packed weekend.
Sorry this blog is long but I wanted to tell you all about Kandy! I can't believe next weekend is my last weekend in Sri Lanka! 😞
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