Monday 28th October 2024

It was time to say goodbye to Batticaloa this morning, but we had one last walk to visit the Indian Ocean before our final breakfast. It was very poignant, as Boxing Day this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the terrible 2004 tsunami that claimed the lives of more than 35,000 Sri Lankans. We walked past a small home destroyed in the tsunami that has never been rebuilt, and onto a very peaceful shore lined with fishing boats and fishermen mending a net.

A small fence surrounded the surviving remnant of a catholic church that was destroyed, with an identical structure to be seen in the new building that they replaced it with. A lone tree surrounded by a low stone wall acts as a memorial to those who died in the tsunami. The devastation was enormous, but time has now moved on, and the fishermen peacefully mending their net in the early morning heat was a reminder of how Sri Lanka has recovered from the disaster.

It was an emotional experience, and also an extremely hot one, as I was drenched in sweat by the time we got back to the Riviera Resort for the last time. Nilanga was waiting for us, and he joined us for a cup of tea whilst we had breakfast, then we dropped Daya off as we passed his place of work on our way home to Kurunegala. We spent such a lovely time together in Batticaloa, and I am hoping that we will see him again before we leave.

We had a good journey back, stopping off at a delightful little restaurant called The Roti Cafe in Habarana for a light lunch. The Internet was down when we got back to our apartment, so shortly after dinner at Razeena's I went to bed, and got up at 04:00 to see if the Internet was back. Fortunately, it was, so I was able to complete this blog and my diary before breakfast at 07:00 at Razeena's, and an early start again at the Royal International School.

Today's photographs are completely focused on the walk to the beach, showing all the things mentioned in today's blog, as it seemed fitting to just concentrate on that today.







Comments

  1. SunshineOctober 29, 2024 at 11:06 AM

    ❤️

    ReplyDelete
  2. CharlesNovember 2, 2024 at 2:22 AM

    I'd forgotten how badly affected Sri Lanka was by the tsunami. It seems so long ago now.

    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 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