Now its only half holiday

We're in Colombo now. Or the sort of suburbs, or maybe the outer reaches of Colombo, in a an area called Mount Lavinia.


We're in an urban flat, which is still only a few yards from the beach, but its quite a different feel. The owner, a Sri Lankan guy called Upendra, went to school in Wood Green - bizarre. Here's the view from our window:


We arrived on Sunday, and it was initially quite a culture shock after the south to be in the midst of so many people. Della, Don, Steve and Gavin arrived the same afternoon and are staying a couple of minutes tuk tuk ride away at the Mount Lavinia Hotel, which still has a bit of quaint old colonial hotel charm, meaning a fairly old fashioned rooms for Della and co, but also has some seriously luxurious buffet breakfasts and a very nice pool for us to make use of.


Our days are now split between spending time with Della visiting the projects, and meeting her contacts, and time hanging out by the pool with J, S and the others.



So far we've visited the school and nursery briefly, and met the main people who have been helping Della here - principally Udeiya, a guy from the village which is the focus of the project, and Colin, the fisherman who saved Della's life on the day of the Tsunami and so started all of this off.

But the highlight so far was the day out yesterday to a beach a couple of hours drive away with about 60 or 70 orphans who Della helps support. They are rarely allowed out of the orphanage so this is a chance for them to really have fun and let their hair down (quite literally, as this is an Islamc orphanage and they all wear headscarves most of the time).





They were packed like sardines into their bus and sang all the way - surreally things like My Darling Clemantine, mixed with their own compositions about "Aunty Della". They also were completely obsessed with S, she was mobbed like a pop star, being passed around between them so much that we often had to step in to rescue her.






After some organised dancing and games, the girls were finally allowed down to the sea, accompanied by the strict instruction "no girl should enter the water above the knee". Well, that didn't last long...

All in all a tiring but rewarding day: