18th December - Day 17

Today we were taken sightseeing by our homestay families.

We were all picked up, along with the Guides we were staying with, by the school bus. The Guides had got a bongo drum with them, and almost instantly the singing started - pop songs, sinhalese song and UK Guide songs - all to the beat of the bongos!

Our first stop was a temple, home to a 7 story tall statue of Buddha and some very ornately painted cave tunnels. On every wall were pictures, paintings, carvings and statues all depicting Buddha's previous lives. There was also a hidden room underneath the Buddha which is where treasures had been stored to stop outsiders finding them in the past.

Our next stop was the Kudawella Blow Hole. The blow hole occurs naturally, shooting water up into the air when water travelling in two different directions collides and the water is forced upwards between the rocks!

Our third stop was a lighthouse. This lighthouse had been build by the British many years ago! We climbed the 222 steps to the top and then climbed up to look at the light in the tip of the tower and to look out over the island and coast. It was very warm up there though so we soon came back down ready for lunch!

Lunch had been made by one of our homestay families - rice, vegetables, dahl and chicken, all to be eaten with our hands! We managed fairly well and our families all looked impressed that we hadn't ended up wearing much of it!

From here we went to the beach - we weren't so sure about swimming here as we hadn't brought clothes to swim in and everyone else was swimming fully dressed. We agreed that paddling to our knees would be fine and just as we went to paddle the rain came down, it was really heavy rain and we got soaked - might as well have gone swimming fully dressed after all! Now soggy we opted to go to an internet cafe to update the blog and to check our emails.

In the evening Sirini (one of our homestay Mums and a Guide Leader) had us all over to her house, we had to perform UK songs to her while her daughters filmed them (and added a bongo beat) in order to teach her Guides later. From here we walked to Damanthyi's house (the school's English teacher) as she had invited us over for dinner.

Dinner included woodapples with icecream (we decided this was better than the woodapples on their own), rice, dahl, salad, vegetables, pineapple and papaya. We were then invited to hear her children and Sirini's perform some songs - which ended up with us teaching them just as many, this time accompanied by not only the bongos but also a guitar!