Monday 2nd December 2024

This was our final full day in Sri Lanka, and we were keen to relax as much as possible ahead of tomorrow's 11-hour flight home. We had a leisurely breakfast, then Valerie went for a long swim, whilst I completed yesterday's blog and my diary, and also rearranged my luggage in preparation for tomorrow's journey. I was keen to buy a present that we had seen at One Galle Face for someone, so we took a tuk-tuk there, with our first lady driver during these past 2 months.

We didn't spend too long at One Galle Face before taking another tuk-tuk to Marino Mall, where we did some final Christmas shopping, before enjoying a coffee and cake overlooking the Indian Ocean - on an extremely hot day. We got a final tuk-tuk back to Colombo Swimming Club and sat outside having a drink and eating some devilled cashew nuts, which we both agreed were one of the most delicious snacks that we had encountered during our time out here.

Balraj Arunasalam from the Rotary Club Colombo West arrived at 18:00 for a scheduled meeting to finalise a Global Grant application for funding for a new project to provide English tuition to government teachers in the Nuwara Eliya area of the Hill Country, and his fellow Rotarian, Jit Seneviratne, joined us a while later. We worked on the document until around 20:30, when we took a break to have dinner, with Valerie joining us.

We enjoyed chatting over dinner, which didn't end until nearly 22:00, at which point I carried on working on the document with Balraj and Jit, not completing it until 23:00. We put a lot of time and effort into it, but these Global Grant applications are a bit of a nightmare, and so we just hope that we have done enough now to secure a successful application this time. It was a strange end to the day, as I went to be feeling quite exhausted from the intensity of this evening's labours.

Today's photographs show the pool at Colombo Swimming Club and a view from it out to the Indian Ocean, the lady tuk-tuk driver who took us to One Galle Face this morning, a Christmas tree at One Galle Face, and another one in progress back at Colombo Swimming Club, which will eventually be placed in the centre of the lawn when it is fully decorated!








Comments

  1. CharlesDecember 4, 2024 at 11:46 PM

    Fingers crossed for the success of the grant application. Tim brought fellow members of the Community & International committee of Bathavon Rotary Club up to date on his take of the process about 10 days ago...

    ReplyDelete

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