Kandy for the weekend!

  Thursday:

the pool at the villa-gorgeous.

All the volunteers at MEF took a 3.5 hour van ride to go up to Kalpitiya, which is on this little peninsula on teh west coast.  The vice president of MEF, Sandith said that we would be looking into a new volunteer project about coastline protection and eco friendly dolphins, etc.  Somehow we all ended up at a $1000 a night villa and spent the whole day eating, drinking and swimming in the pool.  Apparently Sandith knows someone??? Local politicians, psh. It wasn't exactly a wonderful day as the 3 adults who came with us proceeded to get reasonably drunk while the 8 of us volunteers just watched. We were all slightly disappointed that we drove all the way (and let me assure you that the drive was far from pleasant being bounced around in the back of a van) just to sit around all day, not that we were complaining bout the location. It was just an odd situation because we couldn't leave until Sandith called the driver which he kept refusing to do so we didn't end up leaving till really late.  Then we got to enjoy the added privilege of trying to sleep while bouncing up and down the whole drive back.
Friday:
Waking up bright and early after 4 hours of sleep, Tom, Tiffany, and I got sentenced to heavy labor at MEF on perhaps the hottest day of the week, typical! We were set the task of creating an area in the eco garden for carrots or some other form of vegetable.  My favourite part was pushing/pulling wheelbarrows up and down the side of a small mountain in order to fill the area with compost.  After hours spent dripping in sweat all 8 of us volunteers went to this hotel where for $2 we can use their swimming pool which is gorgeous, so we spent the afternoon there before going home and collapsing.
Saturday:

Tiff and I in front of the Buddha's tooth shrine

Tom, Tiffany, Robbie, and I took the bus from Kegalle to Kandy, a beautiful city set amidst the hills in the heart of Sri Lanka.  from some places it looks like the whole city is hidden in the trees, probably helping with the fact that this city has withstood two and a half centuries of attacks by the Portuguese and the Dutch.  The lake located in the center was actually man made by King Sri Wickrama Rajasinha in 1807, hard to believe given its size and location.  We got there around lunch and headed straight for pizza hut...i don't think pizza ever tasted so good.  Yum. And since we were there I had to get the chocolate lava cake for desert, is anyone surprised?? It's me we are talking about! After our deliciously satisfying reminder of western food we explore the man made lake and visited the Temple of the Tooth which is Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist shrine, housing the legendary Buddha's Tooth which came here during the 16th century.  You can't see the tooth but you can walk past the gold casket that houses it.  We also saw the Raja Tusker Museum which is devoted to Sri Lanka's most famous elephant Raja (no, not my Raja) who was responsbile for carrying the tooth in the festivals for 50 years (called the Maligawa Tusker) and was declared a national treasure.  We walked inside to find ourselves looking at Raja, no not a picture of him, but the actual Raja, or rather the dead and stuffed version of him.  He's the only stuffed elephant in the world.  Fun fact of the day: To be the Maligawa Tusker there are certain requirements-the elephant must be male and they must be a Sathdantha elephant, meaning that all seven parts of their body must touch the ground while standing (all four feet, penis, tail and trunk).  Also the tusks must be a certain shape.  How they find the perfect elephant is beyond me, but apparently none has filled Raja's big boots yet, I guess it is rather a tall order for an elephant. After that we went to see the Kandyan dancers at the art association which was a really cool exhibit of the traditional dancers and drummers of Kandy and the southern regions.  The last act was 2 men who walked across burning coals literally right in front of me, I was covered in ash from the fanning of the coals.  It was right before this that my camera decided that it had run out of battery life, I guess that's what happens when you don't charge it. fml.

Kandyan dancers

We also got really sad news when we got home, one of the baby elephants at Pinnawala died on Saturday.  Apparently his trunk got stuck under the water (maybe caught under rocks or something???) and it drowned. The mahouts were counting the elephants on their return to Pinnawala and found one missing and went back to the river only to find its body in the water. Surprising that no one saw anything as there are always tons of tourists watching the elephants bathe, but I guess there are so many elephants it would be hard to see them all.
New volunteers coming today-exciting!!