Another Sri Lankan experience…Thursday, curry for breakfast again! We weren’t doing the normal university training regime because the students are protesting about students being suspended. Due to this we had a day off so we went exploring the local area. Firstly we got the university minibus up to the Belihuloya known as “Lovely Lady” waterfall which was being used as a shower by the local villagers. To add to the excitement Jonty and Ollie were planting fake leeches onto the girls which our guide also found very amusing. Blood sucking leeches appeared to becoming a main threat to our journey as Ollie experienced first hand.We then traveled up the fantastic mountains where the views were simply phenomenal before getting to waterfall number two, this was the biggest waterfall in all of Sri Lanka so it was an honour to stand in the water. On the way back Coutts dropped her camera for the fifth time of the trip but thanks to courageous Ollie who dived through bushes it was found. Back on the minibus again thankfully leech free this time we had another unexpected visitor. A MONKEY literally centimeters from the bus, thankfully Jonty captured the moment perfectly with the monkey sitting still, almost posing for the camera. Several hours after the start of the trip we got to the tea plantation which was unfortunately shut, as time was on our hands we decided to visit UVA college which specialized in physical education teaching. Before we left we arranged a netball match between the Team Durham group and the UVA netball team which is due to be played in a couple of weeks time. We then traveled home in the pouring rain to find the university had no electricity but thankfully we had curry for dinner.
Friday we awoke bright and early to take part in the fitness session with the students still on protest we were very grateful for the students that did turn up. The fitness session started by the Team Durham group taking the warm up and was then taken over by one of the P.E staff. We were introduced to some peculiar fitness warm-ups such as Russian dancing, Chinese boxing and duck fighting (don’t worry no animals were harmed). We then split into two groups of four to coach the year 1’s volleyball and year 2’s football for a grueling 2 hour shift it’s a good job we are getting eased in gently.