Well, it looks like another career change. Instead of just dabbling in the education field, I am now fully immersed. My partner in the School of English is going back to Australia, so I have had to assume full responsibility. So now I am owner, administrator, and teacher. Keeping things about the size they are now is my goal. We have around 50 students divided into 5 classes: stages 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. There are 4 teachers and 3 teaching assistants, a cleaner, a part-time admin clerk and an assistant for me. In addition to the school, I do adult classes once a week for about 20 employees of the Ceylon Electricity Board. That has me working Monday, Wednesday and Thursday with additional days at the beginning of the term along with parent/teacher days. That is ample.
Term 2 ended on the 23rd and we commence the last term of the year on September 1, so I am quite under the gun at the moment.
There has been a lot of activity on the health front both for me and my pets. I emphasize the plural of pet as I now have 3 cats: my full-time Patches, and a couple of half timers, Buddy Boy and Aya. The latter are male and have both been fixed. Aya went a day and 1/2 ago. I managed to keep him in for the night but he got out this morning. Hopefully, he will be fine. He did appear this morning to eat, and appears to be alright. Good news.
I had a real scare with Buddy Boy who went in for his surgery 2 weeks ago and came to sooner than I expected and escaped within an hour of the surgery. I was convinced that he died as he had fresh stitches and a cone on his head. Difficult enough to eat and drink from dishes with the cone of shame on his head, let alone hunt. Adding to my anxiety was the fact that the smell of something decomposing was coming from the neighbor house. I was sure it was him. Lo and behold, after a week, he turned up and was just fine. All healed and no cone.
I am sure now that they are both the offspring of the cat that gave birth to kittens at the temple where we have the school. You may remember that one of them was injured. I tried to save him but couldn't. That left 3 and I now have 2 of them. I don't know what happened to the third.
Patches and Buddy Boy on the same blanket. This is the only time this has happened.
No fear.
Rolling around in the front yard.
Adding to the cat menagerie is a dog that I have named Sweetie. She is a stray that my landlady has been feeding on and off. I started feeding her when my experiment with home made cat food from ground chicken parts was a failure. The cats won't eat it, but Sweetie will. Of course, she now lives here too. She is very reticent, always running away when I come near and always has her tail tucked, but she has a lovely sweet fact and is very nice. She lies just outside the door or on the steps coming down to the house.
Eating
Relaxing
Elsewhere on the animal front, or rather insect front, I continue to battle ants.
Ants swarming in my kitchen.
As for me, I am about to pick up my second pair of glasses today. The vision in my right eye is still not good, even with the glasses. However, the second pair are free as the frames on the first pair broke after only 2 weeks. Another month and I will try for contact lenses.
Then I had to have a tooth extracted. Despite having made a vow years ago that I would die with all my teeth in my mouth, this is the second tooth I have had out. The first came out in Canada and was replaced with an implant. That will be happening again, but only after a bone graft.
In between trips to the optician, dentist and the vet, I went to my first ever Sri Lankan wedding. The son of my tuktuk driver got married at a quite swanky hotel. Apparently, the hotel alone cost LKR.300,000. How these people can afford such expenditures is beyond me. The whole thing was quite boring with long gaps between the various rituals. But it meant a lot to Ravi to have me there, so I went.
Wrapped in a sari for the wedding
The couple stand on this decorated platform while they exchange vows and rings. This is accompanied by a lot of chanting and drumming and blowing of conch shells. One of the drummers is to the left.
The groom is dressed in the style of the ancient Kandyan kings while the bride's sari is tied Kandyan style.
After the vows and the signing of the documents, they light these lamps.
The cake. I don't know if this is actually edible as I left before the food was served.
I think this symbolizes prosperity. There are various pulses in the basket which is called a koole and is used to clean dahl and rice. Beside it on the plate is milk rice or kiri baht which is eaten on all special occasions.
Bride and bride's maids.
The entire wedding party goes to the table and feeds each other the kiri baht.
Traditionally, the kiribaht is cooked on an open fire and must boil over. Here they used dry ice with water and milk to create the illusion.
The light show was going the whole time. Then a live band started blasting. The groom is their keyboardist, but of course, they played without him that day.
After everything, the bride and groom repair to this staging area where everyone comes to have their picture taken with them. The bride was very sweet, but starting flagging after standing for more than hour.
In closing, beautiful flowering bush in my friend Deanne's garden.
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