February has been a really busy month for the children here in Sri Lanka.

All of the schools hold their sports meets at this time of year and we managed to attend two of them. Snegitha won her races with ease as usual and we are very proud of her.

Although she has running shoes and spikes, she chose to run with bare feet as she still does not feel confident running with shoes. “Tony Uncle” is in the process of finding a suitable and affordable sports club to join so that she can be properly trained and gain in confidence over the next year.

Nalika’s Head Teacher has recently informed us that she is introducing Cricket into the school sports curriculum as Nalika has requested this so many times. Well done Nalika!

The playground has now been marked out with a netball court and three badminton courts. Every day, between 5.15 and 6pm., the children have “games time”. They have become very adapt at putting up the netball stands and badminton nets and they absolutely love playing these games. We had a visit from two of our donors recently, Neal and Lesley Avent. Lesley played netball at a really high standard for many years and very kindly spent two afternoons at the Home instructing the girls in the proper technique for shooting goals and giving them warm-up routines which they can follow.

Independence Day in Sri Lanka is 4th February, which is a Public Holiday.

We decided to have an Art competition where the children from each dormitory had to work together to think of a famous Sri Lankan hero and depict that person on a flag.

The “heroes” chosen were:
A)Lasith Malinda, a famous Sri Lankan cricketer
B)CWW Kannangara, founder of free education in Sri Lanka
C)Susanthika Jayasinghe, Sri Lankan Olympic Athlete.

The results were outstanding and we have displayed the work on our new cork boards which were put up recently by Sunil, who now works in the Home three days a week, carrying out repairs and improvements, as well as helping Sister with the marketing by bringing the fresh fruit and vegetables in his “tuk-tuk”.

We managed to take a group of children to the Arts Festival again this year. It was a very hot day but nevertheless, they really enjoyed themselves and decide on their own personal favourite painting as we walked around. We also came across a troupe of traditional dancers which we heard before we saw as they were accompanied by musicians playing traditional instruments.

As February drew to a close, we celebrated a very special birthday at the Home.

Samadhi, our eldest girl, turned 21 on 28th of February. We celebrated by giving her a cake and singing to her. The children all signed a special card for her also. “Happy Birthday, Samadhi”.