DHE Bracelets

For the past few service sessions, we have been planning on how we were going to raise money. We decided to design some bracelets and sell them to the school’s students, teacher’s and parent’s. The design was made by Khalis, where he made the bracelets completely black and wrote a “DHE” in red and a “We Hear You” in white. The bracelets looked professional and simple. We made 200 bracelets and decided to sell them for 200 Rs. We were hoping to sell of them to make as much profit as possible. We planned to sell throughout 1 week, where pairs would sell on each day. I was assigned to sell on Wednesday after school, with Gyungmo. We were able to sell 7,000 RS worth of bracelets. In the end, we managed to sell of our bracelets by Thursday, while planning to finish on Friday, so we did really well. In total we made about 12,000 Rs. and were able to give it all to our service. I was really happy to have been able to sell all of our bracelets, especially because i didn’t think we were able to at the start. 

Above are pictures of the bracelets where the bracelet is completely black with the words written on opposite sides, We Hear You and DHE.

DHE Football Match

Yesterday, we played a football game with the Deaf and Hearing exchange students, from my service group. We made the teams, with a mixture of boys and girls and started playing the match. A few minutes into the game, i realized it was a bad idea. The DHE kids didn’t really like football, or really know how to play, and the girls from the group were disinterested. I tried to help, by giving the ball to the DHE kids, and teaching them how to play, but it was difficult. Football is also a game where communication is key, but because the students were deaf, it was difficult to play. Towards the end, the girls got bored and decided to leave, and the boys continued playing for a while. A few minutes later we also got bored so we went to the canteen and ate some snacks. While we were eating our snacks, we tried communicating with the kids, and they told us they preferred playing cricket, and they seemed much more enthusiastic about cricket. This really contrasted the 2 different cultures, where Sri Lankan kids prefer much more to play cricket while the foreigners preferred football. Next time, we will play cricket if we were to play another sport.

We’ve also decided to start selling our bands, which we got about a week ago, for 200 LKR. I will be selling them on Wednesday after school with Gyungmo.

SAISA Basketball

For the third semester of SAISA, i have decided to join SAISA basketball. I have never played proper basketball before, but i was determined to learn how to play. Because of football, i am quite fit, i can run around, and i am quite quick, but my basketball skills are not very good. I was really exited in the first few weeks of training as i was eager to learn. Over the next few weeks my eagerness started to drop. I think this was mostly because the head coach had sort of decided to split the squad into the better players and the not as experienced. I was put in the less experienced and for the past few weeks training, has been quite separated, where the better players are being treated with a bit more attention. They generally get more tries in drills and are being given more time to understand plays. This separation of levels is also seen when we play matches between ourselves where we end up losing 64 to 28. It is very demoralizing and some of us, including me, do not feel a need to learn and practice. Hopefully this will change in the future as it doesn’t allow me to learn how to play the sport properly.

SAISA Tournament in Chennai

About 2 to 3 weeks ago, the Under-19 boys football team traveled to Chennai. The flight was only an hour and 20 minutes long because of how close Colombo was to Chennai. Once we got there, we went to the school, looked at the field and talked with the coach. We were then handed to our hosts who took us back to their house. I was rooming with one other player. Our host were very kind and helpful.

The next day we played our first game, against Bombay. This was a big game. We played Bombay last year in the final, where we beat them on penalties, so there was a lot of tension in the game, as we wanted to show we were the better team, and Bombay wanted revenge for what we did to them last year. It was an intense game. I started off on the bench, which i was a bit disappointed with. 15 minutes into the game, coach Turner was not pleased with the football we were playing, so decided to shift some players around. He then told me to come on and play as a left winger. I was glad that the coach still thought of me as a starting player. 5 minutes into the game, everything is going quite well, I was doing my job, doing what I was supposed to do, until I lined the ball up for a cross and a Bombay player slid in, cleats up, into my ankle. The ref called it a foul, while i was trying to walk it off.

The pain wasn’t too bad at first, I thought it was just a little knock and that i  could walk it off, which i did. I continued to play on for the rest of the game without the ankle really bothering me too much. We lost the game 1-0 which was disappointing, but at least we weren’t out of the the competition. After the game, my ankle started to hurt a bit more, i felt it more. I think this was because of the adrenaline i felt while playing the game which made the pain go away. I looked at my ankle and it looked very swollen. Long story short, i checked with nurses and doctors, and they concluded i had a torn ligament. I tried playing at least one other match but really couldn’t. Every game, i still put on my kit and socks, but every time it hurt too much. In the end we came second, which was great, but i was disappointing i couldn’t contribute to the team.

Team photo, about a week before the start of the competition. I’m the second to last player in the back row.

My last WWW

For WWW, i went to highlands. This consisted of going to the Horton plains, and Nuwara Eliya. It was an exiting experience that i never would have tried if it wasn’t for this trip. I really enjoyed this trip as it allowed to see a part of Sri Lanka i have never seen of before, live in a remote place with limited electricity, sleep in sleeping bags and tents, and climb the 3 highest peaks of Sri Lanka. This final WWW was amazing as i was able to experience and see Sri Lanka in a whole complete different way. I was also able to bond with some good friends, and make some new ones.

During the trip, i didn’t enjoy myself. I was forced to wake up at 5 in the morning, climb mountains for hours, shower with a bucket, go to the bathroom outdoors and eat Sri Lankan everyday, which wasn’t too bad, but gets annoying after a while. Even though at the time it wasn’t great, i knew that at the end, i would be grateful for the experience.

Below is a link to the map and route of our WWW trip.

http://oscolombo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=fc362b61ff9f4ae3b93a4b6d9e3d6b00&extent=74.3518,3.9102,86.4697,11.1158&home=true&zoom=true&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=true&details=true&legend=true&active_panel=details&basemap_gallery=true&disable_scroll=true&theme=light

Group photo on Pidurutala

Deaf and Hearing Exchange

For the past few months i have been involved in Deaf and Hearing Exchange. In this post, i want to bring to attention the global issue of deaf people. In the past few months i have experienced, minimally, how it feels like to be deaf. Deaf people is not a big global issue, and not a lot of people do not really fully understand how life is when you’re deaf, like me, but after learning sign language and communicating with deaf people, i have understood much better what it is like to be deaf. When i first communicated with children, it was very difficult to communicate. It was frustrating and confusing. I noticed something when i looked up and saw my classmates, everything was very quite. And it was incredible to see, how even though we were communicating it was silent. I am so used to see a room full of kids communicating to be very loud, but with the deaf children it was silent. And that was when i realized how different life is when you are deaf, and through the frustration i experienced when trying to communicate, i realized how hard life is for them.

End of Semester Service Reflection

We ended the service semester recently, and overall i really enjoyed the semester. Throughout the semester i liked interacting with the kids and learning sign language. A few positives for this semester are, the parties and the sport games as they were very interactive and fun. Something else i liked about this semester was being able to discover a new type of life, where you communicate very differently to what i am used to. This semester, i was able to understand and see how some deaf people communicate and live. 

A few things i would like to be improved for next semester is the way we are taught sign language. What has happened in the past is, a teacher would come in every other session and teach us. This was very traditional, and instead of feeling like we were doing service, we felt like we were in a classroom learning things. I would prefer if we could learn with the deaf children instead of alone with a teacher. I think that learning like this would be much more interesting and feel much more like service as we get to interact with the children.

Deaf and Hearing End of Semester Party

The deaf children and our group eating food together at the start of the party. Flags and images of our countries were set in front of our food as show at the bottom of the image with Korea. The 2 children at the front are deaf children

Last week, we had a little party for the end of semester with the deaf and hearing exchange service group and the local deaf children. Each student from the group brought a snack from their home country, and since I am french, i brought some chocolate. When the children first came, we ate for the first few minutes. After finishing most of the food, we went on to play different games. We started off with a simple game where a pencil was tied around your waist and you had to place the pencil inside a bottle. It was a lot of fun as everyone was put in an awkward position and everyone was laughing. After the pencil and bottle game, we played the game where everyone had to hold hands in a circle and try to get out of the mess. We had to go over and under and twist to try and untangle ourselves. It was difficult to do it well, as the communication was limited. Since our hands were locked in positions and the children could not hear, it was difficult to work out a solution, but we were able to through head nodding and facial expressions. It was nice to see that even though the communication was so limited we were still able to get untangled. After this activity we played a rock paper scissors game as teams. This was also a lot of fun. After that, we looked at some images taken through out the semester. We then gave our cards which we made the week before and wished them a happy new year.

SAISA Under 19 Boys football

Last week was our first training session with the team. This is the 4th time I will be trying out for the team, as I started in 8th grade. I have made the traveling the last two times I tried out for the team and this year I am excited to play for a place in the final team. Saisa football is probably one of the hardest team I have I played in as it is very intense. We have two months to practice as a team before the tournament so the training sessions are very intense and you have to make sure you are ready for it every time. Saisa football also takes up a lot of time and can sometimes be exhausting, but being able to compete in the competition is a great feeling. This year oiur team is young, compared to last year’s experienced winning team. It is going to be a tough two months in order to help the younger players improve and be first team players. This year, we also lost 6/11 of our starting players, so our team this year have not played a lot of matches together. Everyone is not on the same page at the moment but with time, I think we will improve as a team.

The whole football squad a few minutes before the final. I am at the bottom left wearing the number 18.

Creativity

So far for creativity, I have been learning a new language, sign language, and I have organised activities when coaching the Under-12 team. I have engoyed both as they allow me to think creatively and do something different. I football coaching, I have to think of different games or activities for the kids. I use past knowledge from experience and try combining activities together to organize a good session. It takes some creative thinking to be able to combine different activities to make new ones.

In deaf and hearing exchange, I have been learning some sign languages. It is interesting to learn these new signs as some of them are very complicated and others are simple. Simple enough that without knowing the meaning of the signs, you can still understand them. I really like learning these new signs as I am able to communicate with the deaf children.