WWW continued...

The actual intent of our trip to Hambantota was for us students to help renovate two pre-schools that our school had funded in building. We were split into two groups, one for each pre-school.
For three days we spent about 45 minutes each moring playing with the kids before attending to the hard physical labor set before us.

Playing with the kids I realised the hard fact that you only feel that you are doing something worthwhile when you really get into it and interact. On the first day it was rather boring for me helping with the sports group as I simply helped retrieved the football or some such thing. The next day, however, I was with the arts & crafts people where I was forced to interact with the little children, all very enthustiastically being encouraged to open up by their mothers close by. It was amazing how genuinely happy both the mother and child were when I found a picture that the child liked and cut it out, for him to paste with the intention of making a collage. One of the pictures was of the elegant interior of a hotel I had actually been to just 3 weeks back with some friends. The mother and child both could not help just talking about the "extremely beautiful" images of dining and recreation depicted in the pictures, an experience that had not thrilled me to a large extent.