This week, Emily R, Radhika and I went to Sabragamuwa University which is located in the hill country. We had a very warm welcome by Siva and he took us out for dinner after a 6 and a half hours long and crowded bus journey. Between us, we ate 2 plates of rice!

Puwakgahawela was started by Durham sport students; there is a lot of space outside. The centre has beautiful scenery; it’s surrounded by mountains. For after-school, we taught year 4 parts of the body and we played hangman to test their understanding. Highlight for Rads, it was a young girl’s turn and after a while no one guessed what the word is. She whispered the word to Rad and Rad thought she said “poop”.

The tuktuk journey to Ihalagalagama was a long and bumpy ride. We went higher and higher up the mountain and the views were stunning. We were all surprised that the tuktuk actually made it up the mountain! We helped the children with their drawings and alphabet and also helped the teacher with preparing for their next lesson. We did “Ring a Ring a Roses” and “Old MacDonald”.

We enjoyed teaching non-academic staff especially on Tuesday. We talked about ourselves, university life in Sri Lanka and England and whether Sri Lanka have any measurements in place to tackle global warming. The staff picked up on our different accents, we explained the differences and how we sometimes have trouble understanding each other.

In our spare time, we went swimming and played badminton with junior staff. Highlight of the week: definitely it’s the jeep with no seat belts from the University all the way to Uda Walawe. That was an interesting and exhilarating journey; wind blowing in our faces and waving to the locals as we went passed them. Em and Rads saw lizards and a monkey crossing the road. We saw lots of elephants, water buffalos, different species of birds and a turtle. Because of the draught, there is not a lot of water, so the some rivers are dried up. It was a good ending to the week! We look forward to going back to Sabargamuwa.