Just call me Mrs Mop
With the arrival of my buddy Anne on Thursday, I thought it time to tackle the cleaning of my room.I think this room has been neglected for some time - A bit like the computer lab. With the help of Geevani, we swept, dusted, wiped, re-organised, swept more, removed probably about 40-50 spiders and one bettle which was hiding in a skirt I had drying....ewwwh! Polished the mirror...so now you can actually see yourself, wiped down the bed frame, changed the bed linen, I even cleaned the windows. I really was a mission! And it was worth it. Ramanee commented that her room has never looked better. Archie jokingly said I was a much better cleaner tha Ramanee! I'll have to take a piccie of it this evening just to remember the moment it looked so spiffy. I know that within 2 days, the spiders will be back and so will the endless webs! But atleast till Anne gets here it will look good. She's struggling with the poverty i think and especially the squat toilets so I want her to feel as relaxed as possible here. I know it has taken me over 2 months to get used to the place. Ramanee pointed out that i no longer tip toe in the house because of the floor....when I first got here I didn't like the feel of the floor on my feet expecially after taking a bath...so would walk on tippie toes....now, I bound round like an elephant on heat! When using the bathroom i used to change into my clean clothes before I got there becuase I couldn't deal with changing in a wet room....and now, it's easy like bathing in the tank. Wanni, of course, wtih all my seething commnets yesterday sent me a few comments. Apparently, when I arrived here, many villagers didn't approve of my clothes and my smoking to the point that i could have been hounded out of the village by a mob (not sure if that was slight exaggeration on Wanni's part). And now because I bath in the tank and wore a sari for prize giving, I'm apprently more Sri Lankan. It doesn't seem to matter that it still wear the same clothes and smoke like a proverbial chimney! These people - really, some of them really are thick as pig shit. I was talking to Ram about it this evening and she says it's because many of these villagers are so uneducated they don't know anything else than whats infront of their nose.More reasons to leave here - Sri Lankans do seem to suffer from a terrible case of double standards.
We had our first pronunciation lesson today. It was hysterical but I think the girls really enjoyed it. Whilst I was cleaning the room this morning, Wanni had them plating grass. I joked to Iresha that her life right now consisted of uploading websites and planting grass! She had to laugh! Anyways, my bro sent me some class pronunciation books with cassettes. So we worked on the sssss sound as in sun and the zzzz sound as in pens. I'm learning alot about pronunciation too. Desks seems to be the difficult word of the day....it kept coming out DECKS....gotta love them for trying though! An hour went by quickly and i think it was a little light relief for the girls and me who was exhausted from this mornings cleaning.
Afternoon fluttered away and then the girls wanted to play footie. They have it in their heads that if they play enough they will get really fit.....CRAZY GIRLS! So with legs still aching from yesterday's efforts on the pitch we headed out again. This time there was only 7 of us...3 on my team and 4 on the other. I actually had to run around today. I'm definately getting fitter. My whole body aches this evening.
Post football was the tank. Now this was an interesting trip. Having just finished rinsing out the conditioner I turned to witness the tank being invaded by a herd of buffalo....I wish I had had my camera. What a sight. But also, how grim is that knowing that I'd probably been bathing in diluted buffalo piss for days?
Had an interesting chat with Ram under the mango tree this evening. I commented that Anne probably wasn't to good at eating with her fingers so I'd give Ram the cutlery I had bought (in case of emergency) to use on Anne's arrival. It then turned out that Ram has never used a knife or fork or spoon. How weird is that! She believes that food won't taste so good if eaten with a metal implement!! We then launched into a whole list of food that she'd never tried. Pizza, fajitas, spaghetti, snails, fish and chips, chinese (chinese style), thai.....And whats worse still is that she believes that though she hasn't tried them she won't like them. No that bugged me....and I told her. How can people say they don't like something if they haven't tried it? The world is very limited here. Their experiences are truelly only local. And they as much about the world outside this village as I know about the Black Hole Theory. Are there people in England like this? It scares me to think that there might be! Some things are so obvious to me yet to the people here, it would never have crossed their minds. For example, Wanni was invited to an Opening of a computer training center in the city on Monday. On Sunday night, he asked what should he wear? Now as CEO/Founder/Director of this Foundation, you'd have thought he would have a suit or atleast a shirt and tie kept asides for special occassions. Not this CEO. He ended up going in jeans and a t-shirt and quite rightly felt embarassed to go and stand inside as everyone else was wearing suits.....next top task for me...Invest in trousers, shirt, tie and shoes for the Founder! His brother is a tailor for gods sake...men, couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery as they say!!! Now...for his inside leg measurement..........
Good night all
mx
We had our first pronunciation lesson today. It was hysterical but I think the girls really enjoyed it. Whilst I was cleaning the room this morning, Wanni had them plating grass. I joked to Iresha that her life right now consisted of uploading websites and planting grass! She had to laugh! Anyways, my bro sent me some class pronunciation books with cassettes. So we worked on the sssss sound as in sun and the zzzz sound as in pens. I'm learning alot about pronunciation too. Desks seems to be the difficult word of the day....it kept coming out DECKS....gotta love them for trying though! An hour went by quickly and i think it was a little light relief for the girls and me who was exhausted from this mornings cleaning.
Afternoon fluttered away and then the girls wanted to play footie. They have it in their heads that if they play enough they will get really fit.....CRAZY GIRLS! So with legs still aching from yesterday's efforts on the pitch we headed out again. This time there was only 7 of us...3 on my team and 4 on the other. I actually had to run around today. I'm definately getting fitter. My whole body aches this evening.
Post football was the tank. Now this was an interesting trip. Having just finished rinsing out the conditioner I turned to witness the tank being invaded by a herd of buffalo....I wish I had had my camera. What a sight. But also, how grim is that knowing that I'd probably been bathing in diluted buffalo piss for days?
Had an interesting chat with Ram under the mango tree this evening. I commented that Anne probably wasn't to good at eating with her fingers so I'd give Ram the cutlery I had bought (in case of emergency) to use on Anne's arrival. It then turned out that Ram has never used a knife or fork or spoon. How weird is that! She believes that food won't taste so good if eaten with a metal implement!! We then launched into a whole list of food that she'd never tried. Pizza, fajitas, spaghetti, snails, fish and chips, chinese (chinese style), thai.....And whats worse still is that she believes that though she hasn't tried them she won't like them. No that bugged me....and I told her. How can people say they don't like something if they haven't tried it? The world is very limited here. Their experiences are truelly only local. And they as much about the world outside this village as I know about the Black Hole Theory. Are there people in England like this? It scares me to think that there might be! Some things are so obvious to me yet to the people here, it would never have crossed their minds. For example, Wanni was invited to an Opening of a computer training center in the city on Monday. On Sunday night, he asked what should he wear? Now as CEO/Founder/Director of this Foundation, you'd have thought he would have a suit or atleast a shirt and tie kept asides for special occassions. Not this CEO. He ended up going in jeans and a t-shirt and quite rightly felt embarassed to go and stand inside as everyone else was wearing suits.....next top task for me...Invest in trousers, shirt, tie and shoes for the Founder! His brother is a tailor for gods sake...men, couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery as they say!!! Now...for his inside leg measurement..........
Good night all
mx