Service Update

This years service has been very challenging for me as historically i have been very reluctant to involve my self with things that have to do with actively interacting with people in particular students. This meant that attempting to teach children chess was and still is undertaking a new challenge. At first me teaching partner, Sadira, and I were unsure of how to proceed with the teaching when we we could not communicate cross language barriers and were unsure of our opponent's level of knowledge. In the end we decided to play out a test game, two against two, and realized that they knew the pieces movements quite well but lacked strategy. Since then we have been playing quite high level games but instead of letting them make mistakes pointing out flaw in their strategy either with Sadira's limited sinhala or piece movement demonstrations. Their strategy even in the few weeks since we started has shown a marked improvement. Additionally interacting with them has given me a pace to practice my even more minimal sinhala. 

Sense the seem to be improving so markedly we hope that eventually they will be able to take their skills out into their communities and teach others. As our communication is getting better we hope to soon undertake the new challenge of teaching them how to teach chess.