On December 7th, 2018, a group of 13 students from the Kambala School joined us for a day of activities, including cooking, sports and Theory of Knowledge (TOK) activities. Kambala School is a girls’ school in Sydney, Australia, and this is the third year students come to OSC once during their annual Sri Lanka trip, in which they visit most of the interesting cultural and natural sites the island has to offer.

The day started with introduction and some ice-breakers, during which we gave and helped them to put on sarongs, a commonly worn dress in Sri Lanka. We then proceeded doing a TOK exercise in which we mapped examples in Areas of Knowledge and Ways of Knowing, in relation to food. This activity was in mixed groups, which already allowed interesting exchange of ideas with the students from a slightly different educational and cultural background. The reason the activity was linked to food and cooking is because the next activity was cooking Sri Lankan meals. We were again divided into groups, each of which was assigned a parent or household help from our class members who helped us and assigned us jobs. The activity was a lot of fun, and it was interesting to see how Sri Lankan food is made. Curries, dhal (pulses/lentils), roti (flatbread), Sri Lankan pancakes and some vegetables where produced by the groups in the end, and was prepared as a buffet for everyone who participated. During the meal it was fun to talk about our subjects with the others who are also in an IB school.

The final part of the day was sport. We played cricket, the most popular sport of Sri Lanka, followed by the national sport, volleyball. The focus of course was not to play seriously but rather to interact. The whole day was a great opportunity to improve social skills, by having conversations and working together with people we have not met before.