The month of May started very frustrating. Because of the brutal terrorist attacks on Easter Sunday on 3 Christian Churches and 4 Hotels in Sri Lanka, whereby 250 people died and 500 got wounded, the whole country suffered.
Suddenly there were curfews, shops were closed, no transport possible etc. The Government announced that the school should be closed till security was back to normal.
This year the Dr. Reijntjes School for the deaf celebrates the 35th Anniversary and on 27th July a lot of foreign guests were expected. One after the other cancelled the trip because of the Emergency Law and fear. Many countries called back their citizens and were sending planes.
The Government decided to open the schools again on May 13. But as the fear was still there, most parents kept their children at home.
We also got the 13th of May only 4 children and the next day another 4. That was all for that week!
Wesak (an important Buddhist Festival) was not so much celebrated this year because of security reasons. But we made nice Wesak Lanterns with the 8 pupils and the staff members.
Luckily on May 21 all the schools started again and the pupils came back in a happy mood with their parents. For the parents we had a program to clean the school garden, like every start of the new term, to be sure no dengue mosquitos are left.
On may 23rd Pathum (our computer instructor) married with Christina (past pupil of the school).
On May 29th all the deaf students participated in a drawing / art or essay writing contest, organized by the Social Services Department. Last year we also participated and got a lot of prizes.
