Saturday 20th January 2024

I woke up around 06:30 this morning, as a tiny bird had managed to get through the outside shutter and become trapped between the shutter and the window, so it was fluttering up and down and tapping loudly on the window, but after a few minutes it seemed to find its own way back out. I also woke up to two lovely photos of my daughter Hannah, who has just bought her first house in Edinburgh, with my wife Valerie there to help her settle into her new home.

I had a relaxing morning at Erica's house, watching the Australian Open tennis, whilst catching up on my blog, my diary, and a load of emails. It is such a pleasure to be here, and I feel very privileged to have this oasis of comfort for a long weekend. We had lunch, then went shopping before going to Harold and Raf's house. Harold is one of my volunteers providing conversation sessions to Sri Lankan teachers, and it was a pleasure to be able to catch up with him at his home.

Harold and Raf run a very upmarket place for tourists, renting out three villas that are housed in their four and a half acres of grounds. Their house is wonderful, as are the villas that they rent out and their grounds, which have a large swimming school in them. We chatted over coffee and cake, then Raf showed me round, before we chatted some more over a glass of wine! I thought the whole set-up there was pretty idyllic, and Harold and Raf are great hosts.

We returned to Erica's, and I enjoyed a long swim before we headed out again for an evening meal at the Cactus Lounge Restaurant on the seafront. We sat eating some delicious food with Raelene (another friend of Tim and Liz Westbrook's, who I met on my first trip to Sri Lanka in 2019) and two of her friends from Canada - Ralph and Deborah. It was accompanied by the sound of the waves lapping on the shore, and was a delightful experience.

Today's photos show an excited Hannah outside her front door, and with Val on her first evening in her new home. There are also photos of my time at Harold and Raf's this afternoon, and at the Cactus Lounge Restaurant this evening.










Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 23, 2024 at 6:01 AM

    Happy new home to Hannah. It looks lovely! What an amazing break you're having. It looks beautiful.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday 4th March 2025

Image
I finally got to my last day here which started very early, as I was up at the crack of dawn to sort out a few things in the apartment, then get my last few bits of packing done. Razeena once again brought me breakfast, which was a great start to my day. After breakfast, I popped a present for Sandra in Ravi's office, just in case I didn't see her to say goodbye to her but then met her at the Junior School on my way back and said a fond farewell to her there. I left at 08:30, with Liyanage driving me to the airport - not that I was aware of that journey, because I had got up so early this morning that I nodded off for most of it. I hardly had to queue at all for either the security checks or for check-in, so I had quite a bit of time before my flight was due to take off at 12:50. I had a delicious, filled croissant for lunch, with a latte, then went to Gate 9, where I didn't have to wait too long before boarding the plane, which thankfully took off on time. It was an 11-hou...
Read more

Friday 1st November 2024

Image
There was no school again today, as the staff were out on a staff trip somewhere (not sure where they went), so we had breakfast a little later at 08:30, then did some washing before heading into school at 10:30 to do some planning and preparation for our Maths Staff Training session on differentiation, which is taking place after school on Monday. There are 53 staff coming we have been told - across Grades 1 to 5, so I think it will be pretty challenging for us! Having got as far as we could with the planning and preparation, we went shopping for some Maths resources Valerie needed to purchase, plus a little trip to Halal Bakers to buy some bread for breakfast tomorrow. The street shops are an amazing concoction of buildings with all kinds of trades going on within them, and on the extremely busy Kurunegala to Kandy road, so Valerie took some photographs of the local shops, which you will see below today. We got back to the apartment, and I got on with planning out the Maths Staff Tra...
Read more

Saturday 5th October 2024

Image
It's my fifth trip to Sri Lanka, but on this occasion I am at last joined by my wife, Valerie, and it will be lovely not to be on my own this time. We flew out of London Heathrow Airport one hour late at 22:30 UK time on Friday, and after a rather excruciating eleven hour flight, we eventually landed at Colombo Airport just after 13:30 Sri Lankan time on Saturday. I slept for a few hours on the journey, but Valerie struggled to get any sleep at all. Sandra Wanduragala met us at Colombo Airport, and we drove into Colombo for a couple of hours - meeting up with her daughter, Selena, at the Good Market, which we really enjoyed and would love to go back to. We then went back to Selena's home, where it was good to be able to freshen up a little bit, and enjoy a nice cup of tea, before our driver, Rohan drove us to Kurunegala, where we will be based for the next two months. Arriving in Kurunegala, we met up with my good friend Tharika and her daughter, Evinka, to have dinner at Sri B...
Read more