Snowy (and Sooty) Days

It's been a bit of a strange week really.  The week was going fine.  I'd finally managed to get some headway with my termly plans (difficult to do when your year group doesn't have a termly plan), when at 9.30 on Thursday, the workers building our extension cut the power cables to the secondary school.  On one of the coldest days of the year so far, secondary were left without heat, lights, anything, and no canteen.  95% of all students and staff eat at the canteen, so not OK.  They had to close the school.  It was about 1.30 by the time we were able to leave, and we headed straight to the pub for lunch.  It ended up being quite a fun afternoon.

The problem was that the power was still not fixed properly (no canteen still) until 9.30am on Friday, so we got up as normal on Friday at 6, and then got a call at 6.15 saying that the school was closed!  Teachers had to set work online, so I think the school are hoping not to have to do a make up day - which would be on a weekend or bank holiday.

It was doing some serious snowing by this point too!

So, we ended up having a lazy day - I watched you tube videos about photography, and Matt went to his friends house for lunch.  Then we were out for dinner at our friends who live opposite us.  They were meant to come over to our flat for dinner and to help plan our American road trip in the summer (they are American, and have done this route several times), but Andy is so allergic to the cats that he can't be even close to our flat!  So, Matt made fajitas and we took them over to their flat instead.  Becky made an amazing peanut butter chocolate cake too.  We planned a whole route out, all the stops along the way and how long it would take.  We were in for some serious driving - 9 hour driving days sometimes.  So on Saturday, we changed the entire plan - instead of going in a circle, we are going down and back up the western coast.  Still some very long driving days, but with 3 night stopovers in between rather than 1 night stop overs.  Much more manageable for us Brits, who consider a 5 hour drive to be a full day of driving (our friends drive for about 15 hours and consider that a full day of driving)  Then again, America is gigantic compared to the UK.

After 6 attempts, we have finally settled on a route, and today we started booking hotels, motels, and even an RV with a hot tub for a couple of nights.  So exciting!  It's easy to forget that Sri Lanka is only in a couple of weeks!

On Saturday, I went to pick up my zoom lens, which is now fixed! Yay!  Perfect, in time for safari.

And our fabulous stool arrived from the DTL furniture shop that I went to a couple of weeks ago.  I LOVE it!

Today, the snow has pretty much gone, and the power is all fixed, so school is definitely on tomorrow.  Only 2 weeks until the Lunar New Year holiday though, so not long to go.

Today, we went for lunch at our friends house.  He made two delicious curries from scratch including homemade naan bread, and Louise made cinnamon rolls.  They are such good cooks! We provided the beer and wine!  It was a lovely afternoon.  It's been a nice (unexpected) long weekend.