Monday, February 21
i can tell the time by the color of my skin
I’ve been in Sri Lanka for nine days now.
We’ve been traveling around a fair amount – from Colombo (which Rebecca complains is dusty and hectic and not a good first impression, but is nothing like, compared to Indian urban centers) to Kandy (in the beautiful central hill country), a day trip to the village of Dambulla, further North, where they have ancient cave temples, and a nice modernist hotel overlooking a tank (huge reservoir, where I also went swimming) where we had a lovely ½-birthday lunch, then south to the beach town of Unawatuna (and also Hikkaduwa, usually too touristy for the likes of Bex, but pretty empty now post-tsunami), where we talked to quite a variety of different people Rebecca knows, which helped give me a better sense of the disaster and how it was affecting life, then back through Colombo to collect my mom from the airport, and now we’re in Kandy again. So much for that sentence. It’s word capitalizing, not me.
The moon is out all the time here, it seems like every time I look at the sky. It’s always nice to keep track of its progress, it’s something to have a handle on. In a couple nights, it will be full, and we will climb a mountain (Sri Pada, or Adam’s peak) along with lots of Lankans, to celebrate Poya (on the full moon day), oddly enough, by watching the sun rise from its top.
We had thought that was going to be a little later in the trip, but it will be a good almost-finale nevertheless, and will be a good headstart on the reverse timewhacking.
We don’t really understand it either, but you can’t change Indian rupees for Lankan rupees at a bank or exchange or anything. The bank told us: black market, black market. It’s not really so black though, just a jewelry store (the third one we were directed to), but the business is conducted out in the open and all. A rupee here ~= a cent, which is handy. The money is pretty, but the 200 rs note is oddly different from the others. It’s plastic, and the number font is different, and there’s a transparent part.
Why don’t I have many more things to write? You might have noticed there’s not much to me these days. At least I’m posting this now, and I’ll probably have more later. I’ll tell you about my new name. Now we’re going out to the botanical gardens here.
live by and die by the use of your voice
We’ve been traveling around a fair amount – from Colombo (which Rebecca complains is dusty and hectic and not a good first impression, but is nothing like, compared to Indian urban centers) to Kandy (in the beautiful central hill country), a day trip to the village of Dambulla, further North, where they have ancient cave temples, and a nice modernist hotel overlooking a tank (huge reservoir, where I also went swimming) where we had a lovely ½-birthday lunch, then south to the beach town of Unawatuna (and also Hikkaduwa, usually too touristy for the likes of Bex, but pretty empty now post-tsunami), where we talked to quite a variety of different people Rebecca knows, which helped give me a better sense of the disaster and how it was affecting life, then back through Colombo to collect my mom from the airport, and now we’re in Kandy again. So much for that sentence. It’s word capitalizing, not me.
The moon is out all the time here, it seems like every time I look at the sky. It’s always nice to keep track of its progress, it’s something to have a handle on. In a couple nights, it will be full, and we will climb a mountain (Sri Pada, or Adam’s peak) along with lots of Lankans, to celebrate Poya (on the full moon day), oddly enough, by watching the sun rise from its top.
We had thought that was going to be a little later in the trip, but it will be a good almost-finale nevertheless, and will be a good headstart on the reverse timewhacking.
We don’t really understand it either, but you can’t change Indian rupees for Lankan rupees at a bank or exchange or anything. The bank told us: black market, black market. It’s not really so black though, just a jewelry store (the third one we were directed to), but the business is conducted out in the open and all. A rupee here ~= a cent, which is handy. The money is pretty, but the 200 rs note is oddly different from the others. It’s plastic, and the number font is different, and there’s a transparent part.
Why don’t I have many more things to write? You might have noticed there’s not much to me these days. At least I’m posting this now, and I’ll probably have more later. I’ll tell you about my new name. Now we’re going out to the botanical gardens here.
live by and die by the use of your voice
