Monday 23rd February 2026

It was a sweltering hot day today, as I began my final working week at the Royal International School in Kurunegala. I started with a session on behaviour management with Lalanga, the Section Head for Grades 7 and 8, and it was a very practical session as we dealt with an incident involving a group of students (inevitably boys) in Grade 7 - the mystery of the chewing gum on the teacher's chair that we didn't quite manage to get to the bottom of!

I was frustrated last week at being unable to meet with the Managing Director to provide him with feedback about my work, so he kindly scheduled regular slots for me to chat with him this week. The first one of these was due to take place from 11:00 - 12:00 this morning in his office, but it was cancelled due to him having another meeting, the irony of which was probably not lost on him, and certainly wasn't lost on me, as I have such little time left here now.

I had a good discussion with Priyani today about the key issues that she feels she needs to address in her Grades 5 and 6 Section. I thought that it was a very productive meeting, so I do hope that she found it useful. The Junior Department has been managing without a Principal for some time now, which has inevitably made things harder for everyone, but hopefully this situation will be resolved quite soon, enabling the Junior Department to move forward at a pace!

The heat here is astonishing, and when my meeting with the Managing Director was cancelled this morning, I actually came back and had a cold shower. When I was in Sigiriya at the weekend, although it was wet quite a lot of the time, it was so intensely hot and humid that it felt wet even when it wasn't raining - true jungle weather, I think! I even woke up to a frog in my bathroom on the Sunday morning it was so humid - only a small one, and he didn't stay for long!

I didn't take a single photograph today (unusual for me), so today's photographs are a few that I took before we entered the Dambulla Cave Temple on Saturday. You will hopefully see just how high up it is. You will also see that I love taking photographs of monkeys!






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