A Great Day

We have just had a great day. It is Saturday after a week of tests for Yr 10 and 12 girls and they just wanted to relax. We had a constant stream of visitors wanting to talk (and enjoy our air-conditioned room) about the week.

There was a mix of year levels coming and going. There were several Tamil "teacher" instructing IW. Makarla had brought her a book about 'How to learn Tamil in 4 Weeks' and the kids found it and were determined to help her.

I headed out the front door at the invitation of a few girls to play with them 'at the circus'. This is the small area of the ground that has two double slippery slides, a couple of trees, some bouncy tyres and plenty of DIRT.

They call it 'The Circus' because at the circus you have fun and can see the world. We climbed the stairs of the slippery slide and sat at the top. As we sat there talking I was told to look around and see the world I realised what they were talking about.

It was quite sad for me as I realised that from the top of the slide you can see over the wall that encloses the school and their world. From here they can see out of the school ground and see the shop over the road, the cars and all the activity of life. For the girls of the Hostel, this is the world. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, the only time they get to see the other side of the wall is when they hop on the bus on Sunday morning to go to Church or at the end of Term when their families come to get them to take them home.

So while IW was learning the intracacies of the Tamil language I was bouncing on the tyres and engaging in mass slippery sliding. We had a lot of fun and laughed a lot. I drew the line when they invited me to climb the tree with them. I would have liked to but fortunately I realised my real age and knew there were large danger signs there for me.

After lunch the visitors continued to come and we had time and space with a lot of kids that had not availed themselves of that opportunity. We spent the early afternoon talking and laughing and learnt the intricacies of the Tamil language. Eventually we cleared the room and had an opportunity to rest for a while.

At 6:00 pm we walked to the Hostel where we participated in Evening Prayer. IW played the guitar and we sang, listened to a Bible reading, then prayed. At the completion of Hostel prayer all the Year 10 girls came back to our place for their prayer time. This was instigated by them and we are invited to participate. This finishes at about 7:30 pm.

After they leave we had dinner and then settled down to watch an old war movie to get us back in touch with the reality of life, although I prefer the reality of the Hostel a lot more.