Caked Out

Have had enough cake to last me a lifetime! As it's my birthday today I decided to buy a cake to share with my colleaugues, which is the custom in Sri Lanka. When I was out buying the cake I noticed at the bottom of the display counter that there was a cake with Happy Birthday Ian on it. As there are not many Ians in Kandy whose birthday happens to be today I guessed - correctly - that my students had decided to get me a cake as well (we must have been talking about birthdays at the beginning of the term) which was really sweet of them (I didn't tell them that I'd seen the cake in the shop). Then later in the afternoon more cake turned up in the teachers' room as it's a member of staff's last day tomorrow. I don't mind cake, but by the end of the day I never wanted to see another piece of cake in my life!

As I had to work today and of course as I'm still working on my last assignment, I haven't done anything special apart from going to the temple this morning - which I thought that would be a good way to start the day. Am planning on celebrating once the DELTA is out of the way - can smell the end now!

It's been a very interesting couple of days at work. Yesterday 3 teachers were off, which meant one class had to be cancelled. Two teachers were still off today and it looks like I'll have to teach tomorrow morning, which is not ideal, but I'm on cover. We have huge problems when teachers are sick because we don't have anyone we can call on, which means that if more than one person is sick we're in real trouble.

My assignment is pretty close to completion - just need to proof read it and put everything together. At one point earlier in the week I wanted to throw the whole thing in, but I'm determined to get the damned thing done. I'm heading down to Colombo on Monday morning, so I want to have it finished by tomorrow evening.

On Tuesday a bomb went off on a train in the southern suburbs of Colombo, so I'm a bit worried about going to Colombo - particularly as I'm taking the train down. I'm sure it'll be fine, but the situation here seems to be getting worse. The government is trying to convince the country that the war in the north is being won, but like many people, I have my doubts. It's hard to believe sometimes that this fighting has been going on for 25 years now - so many lives had been needlessly lost and so much money squandered.

Happy Birthday to me! Back to work!