Remembering my first day in Sri Lanka

It's almost 10 months now that i have been here in sri lanka but i still vividly remember my first day.

I woke up early morning and readied myself for my first ICT and also the first time that I will meet all the staff of VSO Sri Lanka. Though I am hoping that there would be other volunteers coming in the country the same time with me, my experience says not to have higher hope as it may be like the first time where there were only two of us. Fortunately, as soon as I opened my door in the guest house, I heard excited voices downstairs of at least 3 or 4 people. I said to myself, they maybe volunteers like me too, I hope they are so that I can experience proper ICT like regular volunteers too. Answered prayers, yes indeed they are volunteers and I found out that there were seven of us. After breakfast and a bit of exchange of information, we boarded VSO vehicle (Upali's been waiting for a while now actually because it takes us a while to finish our breakfast).

We were introduced to everybody (both to VSO staff and our teachers)and were served tea. They are all friendly,accommodating and welcomed us warmly. We had our first session and amazingly we all bonded easily. The lunch was great, the choices are between Sri Lankan food and western food, and to our amazement there are food servers, which later were confirmed that it was catering service. Excellent I said, this is completely opposite to what I had in my first placement. Am I not blessed, yes I believe I am. So far so good, I mean not only referring to food but in general. Then suddenly one of my colleague said, I don’t eat spicy food, can I have a separate one and it should be rice? Huh! We were taken aback by what he said because as I said there are choices. We told him that he can chose from the tray of food in the counter and rice is there the only problem is that yes the viand is actually hot (at least to my standard (LOL)I am not from bicol so I am not really good at eating chili and spicy foods). Sensing that every body is looking (and maybe wondering) at him, he reluctantly joined the group. The rest of us looked at each other and smiled. Huh! I smile to myself while thinking isn’t he something? (LOL)