So last week, Laura, Poppy, and myself did our shift for the final week of the Sabaragamuwa University programme. The mountain scenery was more breath-taking than I had anticipated; the view from our guesthouse was amazing. The programme started off well – Puwakgahawela pre-school in the morning was a lot of fun, the children were lovely, it was very useful the teacher speaking good English and the scenery around the school was amazing. The children will take for granted how lucky they are to have such a fantastic view. In the Monday afternoon afterwards we did the Non-Academic staff session which in previous attempts had been very challenging as the staff had not engaged at all at times, however for us it went really well. We did a lesson on English countryside showing pictures of England, then getting the staff to describe what they saw and how it made them feel. The staff took to it well and my anxiety before the session was completely forgotten about.

The rest of the week consisted of going to the pre-schools again, the second one being Ihalagalagama which was a very bumpy tuk tuk ride to the top of a mountain. As well as this there were session for the students which were very entertaining in the end. Due to them being different students we used the same debating lesson plan and did a debate on marriage. We split them into three groups (Arranged marriage, love marriage and staying unmarried) in which each thought up of reasons for their case and then a group debate took place afterwards, Due to their English being very good the result was great and the students got very into it. By the end of the week we had done 3-4 sessions like these, each as enjoyable as the last.

A nice break from teaching and work however was being able to use the university pool which was so nice, one wouldn’t be blamed for thinking it was a hotel pool when seeing a picture. Also a personal highlight was going to visit Bamabarkanda Falls, the tallest waterfall in Sri Lanka. It was the biggest one I had seen and it was spectacular to see, especially getting to see a rainbow in it when I stood right next to it. I just regret not taking any swimming shorts with me as having a paddle in the pool at the bottom of it or showering in the falling water would have been a nice experience.  Now I have returned and there are now just 2 and half weeks left of the programme before we all go off travelling Sri Lanka. It is crazy to think it is not that far off from being all over.