SriLanka - Blogabond

Hey everyone!

It has been a while I know, but internet access has been very limited in Sri Lanka so far....

Well, let me tell you.

First of we stayed in Colombo with Buddhi, a 2006 ARI Graduate, and his family, that was really akward, Buddi was not allowed to leave the hose because he was on sick leave. So his brother showed us around town and Buddhi's father kept on saying how bad everything is and how badly they needed money, so we felt really really uncomfortable....

We mowed on nearly a week later to a town called Matarna at the southern Coast of Sri Lanka, there we stayed with a 1998 Graduate of ARI, a buddhist monk, that was very interesting and inspiring, after 4 days we moved on to Anradhapura were we are now, staying with Chandana, a 2007 Graduate..

Well, so much about travel infromation....

Sri Lanka is really really beautiful, it is like a small island paradise, palm tress, coconuts and wild animals everywhere...
It is amazing how different from Nepal Sri Lanka is, it is much more western in the sense that there is electricity 24/7, everybody has TVs, Fridges and the roads and manner of driving is much more organized.
Still I somehow liked the Nepalese mentality more and I think the kindness most Sri Lankans meet us with is superficial and because we are foreigners after all...

I have also been have my first share of traveling sickness, bad Diarrea and a sour stomach for nearly a week, that and the painfull first week have contributed to tainting the Sri Lanka experience.

Also nothing worked out the way we had planned, half of the people we wanted to visit are out of the country or not accessible because they live in the civil war area, that has really been a disappointment....

It was more by chance that we went to see Sumananandra (yes, that is a name in Sri Lanka) the 1998 graduate, but it was a very nice and liberating experience. Staying in the buddhist temple was very nice and giving for me, Kelly had to stay at one of Sumananandra's staffmembers houses because there are no women allowed in the temple. Watching the boys and young men cleaning the temple, doing their chanting/prayer, eating, laughing, watching me like an animal in the zoo, all that was so amazing and overwhelming....

I really enjoyed staying there, even though we didn't have any work to do, as most of Sumananandra's work is teaching and conducting workshops, it was very rejuvenating.... In general we havn't been able to do ANY work since coming to Sri Lanka, I hope, but fear otherwise, that will change soon....

About the Security situation in Sri Lanka....
There are a lot of police and military people everywhere, guarding religious sites, checking buses and trains, guarding Colombo....
It felt like kind of a war zone in the beginning and after the bomb blast prior to our coming I had a bad feeling getting on a bus every time the first few days....
But that settled down very quick and I don't feel threatened or scared at all anymore, foreigners are very safe from any kind of attack, and the whole atmosphere is not so threatening....

About the pictures, I will try to upload some later, right now I don't have any on me as this opportunity opened up very unexpected and also the internet connection here is not comparable to Germany or Japan, so it might take a while to upload anything, anyway, it is on my to-do-list.

About the food crisis, in Nepal we did not feel that at all and people seemed also very unaware of it, prices had risen, but not as dramatically, in Sri Lanka though, the price for rice has been tripled just in the month before we came....

So far we have not seen any riots because of that or heard any angry voices (except for Buddhi's father of course :)) but people must be frustrated, especially the poorer parts of the population.

Well, so far so good, that all for today..

Take care all of you!!!

An alle meine deustchen Leser, bitte entschuldigt, dass ich Heute keine deutsche Uebersetzung schreibe, das wuerde einfach zu viel Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, nur so viel, Sri Lanka ist bisher sehr lehrreich gewesen, sowohl auf positive als auch negative Art, es geht uns gut, wenn man von etwas Durchfall absieht, und es ist eine phantastische Erfahrung hier zu sein.
Das naechste Mal auch wieder auf deustch, gebt euch so lange bitte mit der englischen Version zufrieden.
Alles gute,

Der Malte