Tuesday 24th September 2019
I had an excellent day today – in the end! It started off okay. I was up very early, had breakfast and walked to the school. I got slightly lost on the way, and went through some rough ground (more on that later), but quickly got back on the right track and arrived at school before they had even unlocked the building!

I attended the morning Staff Meeting at 08:30 and had my first lesson observation at 09:00. I noticed some blood on my trouser leg, but I couldn’t work out why, as my leg didn’t hurt, so I just ignored it. A little way through my second lesson observation something dropped out of my trouser leg and started crawling across the floor. One of the students scooped it up on a piece of paper and got rid of it. I recognised straight away that it was a leech and when I lifted my trouser leg up there was a lot of blood dripping down my leg. As I crossed the rough ground this morning, I must have picked up the leech and it had been feasting on my blood for at least an hour! I felt quite grossed out by it, but I finished the lesson observation and dealt with it during the break time. 

I did a third lesson observation after break and then, after school, I spent an hour helping students to run through their presentations for the Speech Conference on Friday. They were all doing pretty well, but two of the individual presentations really stood out for me: Vilvatharsiny, aged 20, who did an amazing presentation on gender equality (a long way to go with that issue in Sri Lanka) and Niruja, aged 22, who did a very moving presentation on alcoholism (a significant issue amongst the tea-picking families).

I went back to my lodgings and my hosts kindly offered to wash my blood-stained trousers for me with a few other bits of washing I had. Later in the evening I walked into Maskeliya, where I met Mr. Chan, the Acting Principal. He took me to see where he lives first and I met his second ‘family’, with whom he has been staying for nearly 8 years now. He then took me to one of his favourite places to eat, where the food was delicious and the entire meal for two people only cost 330 Sri Lankan rupees (about £1.80)! It was great chatting to Mr. Chan, and, after the meal, I got into a tuk-tuk and made my way back to my lodgings.













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