Thursday 21st November 2019

I woke up this morning to the most beautiful experience. The place where we are staying is mainly a wedding venue and conference centre, with just a few rooms for overnight guests, and we are the only people staying here, so it felt very creepy last night to be all alone in this huge venue. However, as you will see from today's photos, it is in the most idyllic spot. We were up early, so we had a cup of tea by the lake and I caught up on a bit of work. We were then brought the most delicious breakfast and I don’t think I have eaten breakfast in a more beautiful venue in my time in Sri Lanka (apart from maybe the Ella Waterfall View Guest House).

We went to the Matara Youth Reconciliation Centre, which is the nicest Regional Centre we have visited so far, where we observed Hanshi teaching a Business Studies lesson. We also had a long chat to Chaminda Jayasekara, the Co-National Director of Sri Lanka Unites, which I found fascinating, as it gave me a much deeper understanding of what Sri Lanka Unites is trying to do and the difficulties that they are facing.

We didn’t leave the Regional Centre until 14:00 and we had the most exhausting trip back, which ended with an 8-hour journey on a very uncomfortable night mail train (more like a nightmare train) and didn’t arrive in Nanuoya until 04:00. I got back home at 04:30 and got to sleep around 05:00. I have had some incredibly tiring journeys during my 3 months here in Sri Lanka, but I think this one takes some beating, certainly in terms of its length and the overwhelming sense of exhaustion I felt at the end of it!

Today's photographs show the beautiful view we had this morning for our breakfast, plus a couple at the Matara Youth Reconciliation Centre.













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