Christmas in Sri Lanka

So I have a business VISA for India which states that unless I register, I cannot spend more than 180 consecutive days in the country. If you've ever seen the bureaucracy of India in action that you know that registering is simply not an option . So, a couple months after I arrived in India, I began considering places that I could visit outside of India. At first, I started looking more at places that I want to visit one day, such as, China, New Zealand, Australia or Japan. However, upon looking at the prices of the plane tickets alone, I decided that this was just not going to happen. My British roommate was kind enough to invite me to go skiing with him in the Alps over New Years which sounded like a great idea. That is, it sounded like a great idea until I realized that I had no winter clothes whatsoever in addition to the fact that I would have a total of 20+ hours of travel and would be spending lots of money that I really didn't have. Another time I guess.
I also was hoping that maybe some of the other interns would want to go on this VISA run with me but was getting a bit nervous as two were ending their internship and headed back to the states at that time, and three were going back home for the holidays. I did consider going home for Christmas, but, me being the masochistic adventurer that I am, wanted to suffer by spending all 11 months away from home. Luckily, some interns (Hanne, Kristen, and my roommate, Casey) were staying for Christmas and were interested in going somewhere. After searching numerous travel sites for deals and such, we decided that Sri Lanka would be a good place to go for Christmas and so we went!
The weekend before we left was a sad one as we had to say goodbye to two interns who had stayed in India for about 14 months (they extended their internship/fellowships). On Friday, Monica left to start her new job as a corporate lawyer in, what I can unbiasedly say is the best city in the world, Chicago! The day before she left we had lunch in this mall called UB city which is pretty much where all the foreigners go to get a break from India life. As you walk in the mall, it's like an ode to the European world with all these pictures of Rome, Venice and other European things. Since Monica is a lifelong Anglophile, I thought it was very fitting to get a picture with our buddy Henry:

That right there is Monica and me with our good friend Henry VIII.

As I said, this building really is like an ode to Europe. The other intern to go was our INV intern Christine. She actually left the night before our flight went out but a few of us went to the airport anyway. Since her flight got delayed, she, Hanne and I (well, I more or less watched) played an extended game of 'spot the foreigner' at the airport, which, as you can guess, it not that hard. Basically everytime you see a foreigner you punch ever one around you. It's like the slug bug game you play when you see a Volkswagon Bug. Hailing from Indiana but raised in New Jersey where she used to prowl the beaches looking for fights, Christine was a natural at the game and beat us both up.

Christine (and for some reason, me), posing victoriously a la 80s Hair Metal.

So now we are two interns short and the office is very different without them...

So back to Sri Lanka! We woke up the next day and went to the airport, took a short 1 hour flight on a propeller jet to Chennai and then a 1.5 hour flight form Chennai to to Colombo Sri Lanka. Landing in Sri Lanka was probably one of the coolest things landings I've ever seen (that sounds really lame, but it was cool). There's all these coconut trees around the airport so when you look out your window as you land it looks like you're going to land in a jungle. Upon arrival into a beautiful new airport, we hurried off to customs where we were greeted with this sign:

They really don't mess around in Sri Lanka.

So now, a word about Sri Lanka. I thought that it was basically, 'India Pt. II, on an island' but was surprised by how different it was. For starters, the primary religion in Sri Lanka is not Hinduism like it is in India; it's Buddhism. Because of this, it is a haven for carnevous like me who don't get enough quality beef in India. No cows are running free on the streets and no trash is left on the roads for the cows to eat. Since we were staying on the southern coast of the island we could breathe fresh, ocean air and experience the phenomena of being outdoors with relativley no people around! This is very different from life in India. The foods are similar to south indian cuisine but have this fish based pickle called 'Sambol' (I actually ate it, and had more than one bite thank you very much!). Sri Lanka recently just ended a civil war between the government and the Tamil speaking separatists (Tamil Tigers). Because of this, tourism has not yet reached Sri Lanka but my guess is that this will change in the next 5 to 10 years if not sooner.

I was a bit afraid that our hotel was going to be really run down and ugly but was pleasently surprised to find how peaceful and beautiful the hotel and its surrounding area was. There were really no other people around except other patrons of the hotel and local fishermen who would take their boats out or sit on the beach and try to talk to us.Beach. Notice: Almost completely empty

Our open air dining/late night lounge room.


View from the dining/late night lounge room.

For the first few days we stayed in our area, visited the local town, swam, went to the beach and saw movies like Pride and Prejudice at night (the girls chose the movie, can you tell?). One the first full day we were there, we decided to explore the surrounding area so we walked to the main street near our hotel and looked for an auto (that is, auto-rickshaw) to take us around the town close to us called, Matara. We came across this auto driver and I asked him to take us around. At first he tried to tell me to go to another auto across the street but eventually agreed to take us around. We were expecting him, like most auto drivers in India, to take us to a place and then leave but, little did we know, we were in for an adventure. We drove us around the city and we asked him to take us to the beach (by which we meant the beachfront of the city) however he took us through some random streets, passed a bunch of fishermen who were shocked to see this guy driving four foreigners (in retrospect I think he took us there to show his friends). The beach where he took us was just outside the town and, in my opinion, was a pretty random place to take people. He kept pointing across the river that flowed into the ocean and said, 'My house'. We all nodded and kept walking around. He then took his phone out and was talking for a while. When he hung up, he looked up and smiled at me and said, 'My wife.' Then, once again, pointed across the river and said, 'My house.' I was a little confused so I asked him to take us back to Matara town, assuming that he could drop us off. Once again, I was wrong.
In the center of Matara, on the beachfront, is a fort called Matara Fort, that the Dutch colonists built. Out about 50 meter in the ocean is an island where sits a Buddhist temple. Our auto driver told us to get out and proceeded to lead us to the temple.

The Buddhist TempleCasey, Hanne, and Kristen with a young novice.

After leaving the temple it started to rain so we asked the man if he could take us back to our hotel. It was at this point that I realized he had no idea where our hotel was and, due to the lack this man's understanding of the English language, it was going to be very hard to tell him where to go. We told him the name of our hotel and just hoped that he knew where it was. It wasn't long before we realized that we were not going the way we came. We swerved through narrow streets, barely not running into people. A little clearing broke out on our left and I could see that we were on the opposite side of the river that we had seen. He turned left and into a erally narrow ally with a gate right in front of this. He honked his horn, yelled and this woman in a long red kurta came running out. She opened the gate and then hustled us into their home. Little did we know, our whole tour of Matara was just an opportunity for our auto diver to take us home for tea so we could meet his family.

So, the three white people, (from left to right) are, obviously, Casey, Hanne and Kristen. The auto driver's family (from left to right) are: His wife, his niece (our translator), his niece's mother (I think it was his wife's sister), his mother, his 5 year old daughter and, last but not least, the man himself, our outo driver.

It was quite an experience and was really funny how the whole family just sat smiling at us, watching us eat papaya, and bananas and drink tea. This is something I don't think I'll probably ever experience again but that I'll always remember. Just a whole family putting its day on hold to accommodate four young strangers. We talked a lot with the niece and she, in turn translated to the family, they pointed out a line about, 9 feet up which is where the water reached during the 2004 tsunami. I was actually shocked to see how high it was and that 1. They had managed to survive, and 2. that their house was still standing. After a while, we ran out of things to say and the auto driver broke the silence by saying, 'um....Obama!'
The following day was Christmas Eve and we all wanted to go to a church service and had found a church that was, pretty much, the same tradition that most of us were raised in: Reformed. So we decided to go to their Christmas service which, to be honest was more like a Christmas show. It was full of dancing, drama and singing. The entire service was in Sinhalese (the language of Sri Lanka) but luckily the father of the church's pastor sat behind us and translated everything for us. I'll give you a little taste of what the service sounded like. You judge:

On Christmas, we drove out to Unawatuna to meet up with 6 IJM interns (made up of 3 Brits, 1 Canadian, and two Americans) from our Chennai office.
Raj (one of the Chennai guys) had some fake snow. So that's how we celebrated Christmas.

We spent the day there hanging out at the beach, playing ultimate frisbee, taking pictures of 'the best diving frisbee catches in the water' and eating some of the local food. At night, the person who owned the house they were staying in, made us a home-cooked Sri Lankan dinner full of rice, Sri Lankan curry, fish and sambol. We stayed up talking for a few hours then, far too early in my opinion, we headed back to our hotel in Matara. However, because we had so much fun on Christmas we came back each day to Unawatuna for the remainder of our trip. It was a beautiful place and a beautiful way to remember Sri Lanka.

Something pretty funny did happen on the way home. It had taken us 6 hours to get from Colombo to Matara initially, so since we had a two o'clock flight and wated to arrive at the airport two hours before our flight, we left our place around 6. Unfortunately, we realized only after we were on our road that our flight was not actually at 2, but 3. Further disappointment was met when somehow we cut two hours off of our drive and ended up getting to the airport by 10. This next day was a LOT of waiting around. We sat for 5 hours in the Colombo airport and then waited about 4 hours in the Chennai airport (probably the worst airport ever). Due to this waiting, I did a lot of reading (I finished a book in one day ha). While waiting at the Chennai airport, I was reading as usual when something felt kinda weird. I looked up from my book and saw three old Indian women in Sarees (two in front of me and one, the 'matriarch', next to me) and one middle aged Indian man staring at me smiling. I looked around and smiled at them trying to figure out what was going on. The middle aged man spoke a little English and asked me where is I spoke Hindi and I said no. I asked him why they were all smiling and he said 'You look very smart'. I laughed and was about to turn back to my book when the matriarch slapped my arm spoke to me in Hindi and started to feel my hair. I asked the middle aged man what was going on and he replied that she was wondering where my wife was. I said that I did not have one but that did not stop her. She hit me again, said something in Hindi, then the middle aged man asked when I was getting married. I said that was nowhere in the picture at this point in my life. The matriarch then hit me again, pointed at Hanne (who was sitting a few seats down from me), and then drew a circle in the air. At this point I was very confused. After doing this a few times she got frustrated, took the sleeve of my jacket and wrapped it around my arm, then pointed at me and Hanne. I then realized that she was telling me to marry Hanne. When she was drawing the circle in the air it represented the circle of fire that hindus walk around when they get married and the sleeve was how some churches use the...'knot' (?) when they get married. I laughed and then said no but she didn't understand why not because we both had blond hair so we were obviously meant to be. I still said no so for the rest of the time, any time a white girl walked by me, she'd hit my arm, take my left hand, point at my ring finger and then at the white girl. I guess if I ever need a wife, I know where to go.