Friday 24th February 2023

It was a pleasure to return to Udapussalawa today. Singkoguls picked me up around 08:30 and went through Nuwara Eliya to pick up Tharika, then drove on to Tea Leaf Udapussalawa, where the staff team welcomed us. Pramila and her team have worked wonders since we last went on Monday 30th January, and the school is very much up and running now, with a lovely buzz around the place.

We were there to see how they were getting on, and to do some promotional work to encourage more students to join the programme, which involved visiting two of the local secondary schools. We received a warm welcome at both schools, and I think there will be students coming from both of them. Once the promotion work was done, we stopped off for a bit of lunch, then made our way back in the rain to Nuwara Eliya.

Naresh and Shamira had booked a Grand Tour of The Grand Hotel and they had invited me to join them for it. It is no secret that The Grand Hotel is one of my favourite places, so I jumped at the chance, and I really enjoyed it, especially visiting the Billiards Room, which I had not been in before today. The whole place is steeped in history, and it was fascinating to hear a bit more about the development of the hotel over the years.

This was the family's last night in Nuwara Eliya, before heading off to Colombo tomorrow, so we went to the Grand Indian Restaurant, which I used to frequent in 2019, but have not been back to since. Daya joined us, and it was a lovely evening, with delicious food and great company - Orien and Indio are both so entertaining - and it left me feeling I ought to go back there a little more often. Maybe next time I come to Sri Lanka!

Today's photos show the visit to Udapussalawa, and the Billiard Room bit of the Grand Tour of The Grand Hotel later on, with a final photo of me with Orien and Indio.









Comments

  1. CharlesFebruary 26, 2023 at 1:40 PM

    Good to see you looking so happy (in the last photo).

    ReplyDelete

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