Thursday 31st October 2019

Today was an amazing day, largely because it was the first day that I have had in Sri Lanka when it hasn’t rained at all! You have no idea how wonderful that felt after experiencing so much rain since I have been here.

I worked from home this morning and got some more washing done, including my blood-stained clothes from yesterday’s leech incident. I do think leeches are the most revolting of creatures and I never want to experience another one!

I had a very positive meeting with the Management Team this afternoon, which was great. It was an extremely useful meeting for me because I got positive responses on two fronts. They seemed genuinely pleased with the draft frameworks I have constructed for them for the three different sets of training and will now go through each of them carefully to see how they can be developed further. They also seemed very happy for me to visit the Youth Reconciliation Centres with Daya, so I was delighted with that.

After the meeting with the Management Team I met up with Rachelle and we went to see the accommodation she has found for me for when I come back to Sri Lanka next year. I was delighted with it and I may even spend my last couple of weeks with the family there, rather than living on my own where I am staying now, as it could get very lonely here, particularly in the evenings, when Rachelle goes on Sunday.

Today's photos show my probable accommodation for next year and the lovely view from it!








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friday 16th February 2024

Image
It was my final day in the Pre-Primary Department of the Royal International School today, which was kind of sad, as they have been so welcoming, and I have had the most amazing time there. Miss Agatha and Miss Tharika run a very tight team that manages 902 children from Toddlers to Nursery to Lower Kindergarten (LKG) to Upper Kindergarten (UKG) extraordinarily well, and which provides an excellent foundation for these pupils' learning journey. I had a wonderful morning where I was observing Number lessons with the UKG Co-ordinator and the English Co-ordinator (seeing the level of English in the Number lessons). In almost all the lessons, the quality of the teaching was exceptionally high, with the attention to detail - and in particular with the resources they had prepared - quite incredible. And apart from all of that, it was great fun, which is, in my opinion what learning should be for children. I had a nerve-wracking afternoon, as I had to deliver a session on time management
Read more

Wednesday 14th February 2024

Image
My younger granddaughter Esther is 5 years old today, so I messaged her 10-year-old sister Isabella to ask her to wish her a 'Happy Birthday' from me. It was much less of a crazy day today, with a morning filled with lesson observations - this time observing English lessons in the Upper KinderGarten (UKG) classes, which is the equivalent year to Reception, so I could imagine Esther being at school with the children I was with all morning today. It was really useful today to watch the teaching of English to the 5-year-olds, whose level of understanding is already very impressive. As with the Tea Leaf Centres, it is a fully immersive system, so everything is conducted in English, and it is impressive how much English these 5-year-olds already know, in the same way that the progress Tea Leaf students make through the one-year full-time English Diploma is also extremely impressive. If you have been reading my blog, you may remember that Erica, who I had a wonderful weekend with in
Read more

Saturday 6th January 2024

Image
I would say that this was easily my most enjoyable day so far, but it got rather spoiled this evening when I handled an extremely frustrating situation very badly. Let's focus on the good part of the day, because it really was a pleasure to work with Miggy and Stephanie all day, as we went in search of accommodation for Stephanie from next Tuesday 9th January, that we could also recommend to future volunteers who are working with Tea Leaf Trust in the Nuwara Eliya area. We visited 10 different Guest Houses between 10:00 and 16:00, with a brief stop for a delicious buffet lunch (that only cost 500LKR - a round   £1.25 -  per head) in b etween. We found some very suitable accommodation to suit a range of budgets in a variety of locations, but there was one place that was exceptional, where we returned at the end of the day to make a booking for Stephanie, who will go there at the same time as Isabelle, a new volunteer, next Tuesday. Our ideal accommodation (and I would happily stay t
Read more