Goodbye Sri Lanka

September 26, 2010

We are about to leave Sri Lanka on a flight to Chennai, where we will fly to Mumbai to begin the Indian portion of this adventure. Dave and I are still getting along, though nearly three months have gone by- except he is hovering over my shoulder right now telling me "hurry up, we don't have all day ya'know, move over, you're forming sentences wrong." We're both a little nuts right now, thanks to real coffee and chocolate cake.

We spent the past week in Dinesh's village, visiting with him, his teachers, students and family. It rained almost everyday so we didn't do much except drink tea and eat the most delicious rice and curry in Sri Lanka- Dinesh's mother is an amazing cook. On Saturday morning we helped at Dinesh's school again by writing out sentences and talking to the children. After the class, the students invited us to play cricket with them- something Dave has wanted to do since he arrived in Sri Lanka. Dave now considers himself a cricket hero. Apparently he won the game with a home run (called a 'six'). He refuses to acknowledge that he was playing against children under 12.

Dinesh, Supon, Dave

Outside Dinesh's house

Some of Dinesh's students

Dave the great star

Following Dave's cricket triumphs, we went for a drive with a retired member of the Sri Lankan military who informed us that he had won marksmanship awards and was a drill instructor. He would not, however, have won awards for tuk-tuk driving. He drove like a maniac, didn't seem to understand the concept of shifting gears and ended up puncturing a tire leaving us stranded about 20km past the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless we did eventually arrive at our destination, a waterfall where I was told to "be careful, watch your step" about every 20 seconds until I was so irritated I wanted to throw myself into the water. We were introduced to the retired military, tuk-tuk driving man through Dinesh, because he has an interview this week to become a mercenary in Iraq- he needed to practice his English- so we were recruited to ask the type of questions he might encounter in the interview. As if we know anything about Iraq, security or war. On the way to the waterfall we stopped at nearly every house on the road, where we were served tea and a wide variety of sugar based products. If you you tried to refuse any of these sugar based products, you would face a chorus of arguments that there was in fact, "no sugar, only natural ingredients, good for the body!"

September 28, 2010

We have arrived safely in Mumbai, Dave was right, we didn't have all day and I didn't have time to finish writing this post from the airport. So I will conclude now and let Dave write about our arrival in Mumbai. The night of the waterfall expedition we had beer and dinner at the military man's house- a very bizzare situation, sitting drinking with him, Dinesh and Dinesh's Sir while some 5 year old champion of a reality TV singing competition wailed in the background and the man's two children sat staring at us. The next morning we said our final goodbyes and left Sri Lanka.

Dinesh, Sir, terrible tuk-tuk driver, Dave