Thursday:
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| 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:
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| 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.
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| 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!!
On Wednesday I left for a four day trip around the hill country with my former host dad Michael and 4 other volunteers (from Scotland, France, Canada, and LA-what an eclectic bunch). Our plan was to reach the ancient city of Anuradhapura and tour around there on Wednesday afternoon because it was a Poya day. That's the day on which Emperor Asoka’s son, the arahant Mahinda, officially introduced Buddhism to the island in the 3rd century B.C. and he converted the king at Anuradhapura to Buddhism, hence why all the pilgrims go there. Anyway, after 3 hours on our quasi-pilgrimage we concluded that it would not be feasible to reach Anuradhapura because we had been stuck in traffic for hours. Pilgrims travel from all over the country to pray at the sacred sites and everyone gives them tons of free food along the roads so vans are constantly stopping in the middle of the road for curries, ice cream, fruit, drinks, etc. So we went to Sigiriya instead...usually a peaceful climb to the top, we attempted to climb with thousands of locals. I'm surprised people weren't falling off the steps on the way up. These innocent little grandma's were elbowing people out of their way! 1236 steps later, the view from the top was amazing, we could see for miles. 
The next morning we finally made the rest of the drive to Anuradhapura. It is a 24 square mile complex on dagoba's and old ruins. We only got to see a tid bit of all there was to see as to explore properly would have taken days, if not weeks. We saw the impressive dagobas which were built by various kings and the massive reservoirs that seemed far ahead of their time. For the holy week around the Poson Poya, thousands of people camp out at Anuradhapura to pray, so it was pure insanity-people sleeping everywhere, bathing in the reservoirs, etc. Was very cool. We also saw the Bodhi tree, which apparently is the oldest tree in the world??? It is the tree that Siddhartha Gautama sat under when he found enlightenment. Anyway there are guardians of the tree, and you have to be a direct descendant of the first guardians to get the job. They sit around the tree with slingshots and guns and shoot at the birds and monkeys that try and sit in the tree.
Sounds like my kind of job. Friday morning we ventured to the Dambulla rock caves....it consists of 5 caves ornately decorated with Buddhas and ancient artwork, truly an incredible feat. A King went into hiding in these caves for 14 years and when he regained power he returned to build a temple around the caves to thank them for keeping him safe....at least that's what i think the guide said? We also managed to get a picture with a 12 year old monk! I didn't know that families can give their children into the monk service...hence why there are (as I affectionatly called them) "mini monks" running around everywhere. After Dambulla we saw teh giant golden Buddah. He is the tallest buddah in the sitting position in the world, at a height of around 100 feet. The afternoon found us at a government funded spice garden which was fascinating as we learned all the applications of variosu plants in the medicinal realm. Cloves are recommended for toothache and sore throats. Nutmeg and black pepper stimulates digestion,Ginger alleviates motion sickness and Spices mixed with king coconut oil make an excellent sun cream while citronella repels insects. Who would have guessed?There are also RED pineapples. Weird. After completely relaxing us with a 20 minute head/shoulders/arms/legs massage they then proceeded to ply us with products from the pharmacy-how mean of them! It was so difficult to say no when you are in such a good post-massage mood. Yet, I walked out of there hands free, unlike the other four volunteers! So proud of myself. The evening we went to Kandy (again) and I saw the Temple of the Tooth (again) and the Kandyan dancing (again). But we did go to pizza hut (again)!!!! It was the first time for the other volunteers so I just went with the flow, and managed to get pictures of the fire walking this time. After our tour I dragged Linzi and Sara to the shops to try on sari's with me, I mean I'm in Sri Lanka, I had to try one on at some point! The sales man gave me a sheet of diagrams detailing how to put one on, except all the words were in Arabic so that didn't help much. I just walked out of the dressing room half naked and shouted help, so the lady came over and patiently showed me how its done! So I can now successfully say i can put on my own sari, when that will come in handy again who knows. The hotel in Kandy where we stayed had a gorgeous view, and an outside pool so after a long hot and sweaty day us girls had to go for a swim pre shower...saw the sign after we jumped in saying please shower before using pool. Oops. Then the shower water ran out during Linzi's shower so she walked out completely covered in soap and bubbles which we all thought was hilarious. 
Saturday morning we set out for Nuwaraeliya which is high up in the mountains south of Kandy. We stopped at a tea factory on the outskirts and took a tour of the inner workings of the tea industry-unfortunately all the women had decided to go on strike that day so there was not a worker to be seen. Typical. Was still very nice to get a free cup of tea (really good Ceylon tea) and some cake! My fave! Nuwaraeliya is a small city and no joke it is like we had transported back in time to 18th century England. When all the colonizers came to Sri Lanka they settled there because the climate was so similar to England (why you would choose that I'm still trying to figure out) and so all the buildings are English style. Was a culture shock for all of us for sure. Driving back we saw hundreds of women in the tea fields, apparently the strike was over, so we pulled over and were talking to a couple of the women before the field overseer started walking towards us with a scary look on his face, so we scooted out of there pretty fast. But apparently these women are under contract to pick 16 kilos of tea a day and for that they get paid around 540 rupees, that's about $5-for a whole day's manual labour. If they pick over that amount, they get paid more. Driving down the mountain we were doing hairpin turns all the way down and there were little boys selling bouquets of flowers who would sprint alongside us on the road and when we passed them would shortcut directly downhill and meet us on the next flat part of road and repeat it over and over again. So we ended up giving them some money purely for their persistence. No I'm back in Kegalle, ready to start my LAST 2 WEEKS at MEF. Where did the time go???
