From 1.10 to 2.8, 29days, a forever memory in my life.
I once hear about something about SL from the book, or on the internet. This country contains all the pretty scenery of Southeast Asia and South Asia countries, and it has another lovely name——A drop of tears in the Indian Ocean. With expectation about this country, and through a series of process of AIESEC, I arrived SL with my friends on 1.10. It seems like a huge escape which started at that time.
I saw some pictures of EP houses from other students on Wechat before we went to SL, some are very good and some not. So, to be honest, I didn’t have so much expectation about our own EP house. But when we arrived at our house, I was so happy to see so big and complete house. Yeah, it’s really wonderful.
Actually, at first, I didn’t get used to SL and missed my family very much. The food, the language, the weather, crowded buses, the road, and the mosquitoes are all made me confused and upset sometimes. However, everything was changing because of the project, my friends and my project manager.
We went to a NGO to meet the doctor and accepted some missions he gave us. The first one is help a center to translate some information about a medical school and make a brochure for them. Through making it, I knew the efforts that WHO made for those poor counties, the hard-working that the founder was for those ill person, and the huge influence that Chinese medical method brought for them. And then we went to a children center and got along with some children whose parents didn’t stay with them for two days. Children were very lovely and like to take pictures and played with us. But I think they need more care from there family and the society. I hope that there will be constant volunteers to play or stay with them because everyone would be sad when we leave them. And then, we did the most important mission about our project——the survey about human rights. Of course, my major is finance, so I know little about human rights. So Winne, Rebecca and I learned the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the internet in advance and accepted some good suggestion from Kethmi. Then we went to the university and did a survey among the students. We were very happy to do this because the students were always friendly to us. Because of this, we completed our mission successfully. Of course, we three had a happy time during the analysis time at our house. And the final mission is also about human rights. We went to a rural area and did a school session there. The school is so far from Colombo and it took us about six or seven hours to get there. It was really a tired journey. However, I think the school session was great. We introduced some information about China, such as the views and food. And we also communicated with them about a lot of things which including the UDHR, the pyramids model, and the inspiration to study harder and so on.
During the time in SL, we also had many interesting trips with other friends. Temple of the Tooth, Peradeniya Royal Botanical Garden, Yala National Park and the uncountable beautiful beaches will become the most interesting part of my memory of SL.
Also, thanks to this project I knew about lots of friends from China and other countries, especially our families in our house. Winne, Rebecca, and other friends in another project are my most precious gift in SL. I will never forget them, of course, and my manager. It was my first time to spend the Spring Festival without my family in a foreign country. But we made the dinner together and all of us thought our hot-pot were very delicious! At that time, though I miss my family so much, I still thought they were also my families, too.
It is no doubt that my manager is very responsible for this project and always cared for we three. Not only him, but also his sister would help and care us frequently. I feel so lucky to meet with such a project manager. I hope that he could do a better work in AIESEC.
At last, all of us began to feel sad to accept separation. Sometimes I hate this kind of way to get along with others. We finally got used to everything but we had to separate from each other. It is a very miserable thing for all of us.
However, I thought of some words from 《A MOVEABLE FEAST》by Ernest Hemingway are very suitable for us: By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better. Now the beautiful dream, the huge escape in SL has ended, so I need to find something better to fill my life. Hope all of us could let the bitter alone and have a happy life in the future.
But I will never regret this journey and never forget it——the time in Sri Lanka with you.
By: Cherry