(Deer at Yala. Pic cred: the author)

Planning and taking a trip back to Southern Sri Lanka – this time with my family!

After arriving back from Week Without Walls I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my parents loved the Down South itinerary so much that they, too, wanted to embark upon it! This meant that they focused on and also wanted to visit Southern Sri Lanka and some other areas.

As I had gone there recently, they wanted me to plan out how this trip would be carried out for the long weekend – believing that I was responsible enough to come up with a good family trip itinerary.

This was definitely exciting for me – mainly because I was extremely glad to be given such a big responsibility, and due to the fact that I get to visit some amazing sites again. I talked quite a lot with my mother about what sort of things they might enjoy doing once they got to the area (as my mother was the person who wanted to go on this trip the most). We talked out what places we’d visit, and I gave her information on how the hike was at Situlpawwa, some of the history, etc.

Afterward, I looked into hotels that the area had and made a shortlist of all the best ones – this was then given to my dad and we picked out which hotel would be the best together. I believe that I was very efficient in picking the places that we would stay at.

In the end, after a lot of conversing and booking, I was able to successfully come up with an outline of our trip to Southern Sri Lanka.

(The view from our hotel room at Kataragama. Pic cred: the author)

The itinerary mainly consisted of going to places such as Kataragama (very close to Situlpawwa!) and Tangalle – where a lot of our relatives resided. Sadly, whilst everything had been planned to go to Situlpawwa on the second day of our holiday, we were not able to go there. The people in the area warned us very seriously that there was an elephant on the route there who’d attack the passing vehicles, which caused us to refrain from going.

(Some of the animals we saw on this trip – flamingos, white peacocks, peacocks, and, elephants. Pic creds: the author)

This was something that I had not considered when I was planning, however, it was not a major downfall as we were able to visit other sites such as SellaraKataragama, Ranna, etc.

(Inside a birdcage at Hambantota Bird Park. Pic cred: a really nice employee)

I believe that it was a very enjoyable trip!

Learning objectives:

• LO1 – Strength and growth
  • I think that WWW was able to create opportunities for me such as this one, and due to this experience, I got to observe my growth in taking responsibilities such as this.
  • Furthermore, the experiences that I had on WWW acted as strengths for me, and with these experiences, I was able to shape a family trip to a similar place that I believe was fun for everyone.
  • I think that had this situation come up a few weeks ago, I would have been a lot more unsure – which tells me that there definitely has been some growth in myself.

• LO4 – Working collaboratively with others 
  • Although it was a fairly short trip, I had to communicate a lot with my parents (as, ultimately, they held the final decisions). Therefore, I think that I had to collaborate a lot and be able to cooperate with other people.
  • Moreover, as the trip was a success I believe that this learning outcome had been achieved successfully.

• LO7 – Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions
  • There was definitely a lot of responsibility and things that I had to take into account when planning this trip, I believe that this fully exercised this learning objective.