i have an excess of energy on this exciting friday night, so i thought i’d throw some updates on this neglected blog.
well, i’m alive. i saw a snake. it was dead, but it was also on the university campus, which makes it very frightening. this was one of several bad omens leading up to a semi-disastrous hike in the hills behind the university last weekend. basically, we were driven out of the dark, damp, trail-less forest by leeches - the same leeches that prevented the british (or the dutch, or the portegueses) from conquering the kandyan kingdom until the 1800s. so yeah. if olde timey soldiers couldn’t handle it, i guess i shouldn’t have expected be up to the challenge. i got out of that forest as quickly as i could, and high tailed it to a fancy-schmancy tea center in kandy.
in other valley girl news, i visited two salons weekend for highlights, eyebrow threading, and a shampoo & condition treatment that was the height of luxury. this, and two visits to pizza hut for molten chocolate cake and cappucinno, have been the highlights (hah!) of the past week. (okay i have to amend that because i got an amazing package full of chocolate and other goodies from the fam. definitely a high point)
but there have been woes! this program is a mess! finals are a mess! independent study planning was a mess! i have about five million papers to write, two exams to take, some kind of seminar to participate in (?), and of course, an independent research project to propose and present. yipeee. but, i’m keeping my head above water with strategic venting sessions with my comrades in the struggle, and by listening to the new rihanna song over and over again. so it’s all gonna be okay! right??
here’s an awkward situation for you to enjoy: wednesday (as some of you may know) was diwali, a major hindu holiday. so we trooped our clueless white selves over to a local hindu temple to observe the festivities. which meant walking into the middle of a ritual attended by a bunch of presumably tamil, not sinhala, speaking Hindus who had no idea who we are or what in the world we were doing at their temple. since we had no one with us who knew anything about diwali, we stood in the wrong places (i stood on the male side of the temple, awkward!) and generally looked lost and confused. mostly, i looked at the women’s outfits. you’re supposed to wear new clothes on diwali, so there were lots of beautiful saris on display. things improved when temple attendants brought trays of flowers, powders of some kind to smear on your forehead, and some actually really delicious food. we were given all these things as if we we actually knew what we were doing, and by the end of things, i actually didn’t feel completely out of place! in the end it was a cool experience, and if nothing else, it considerably increased my tolerance for awkward situations.
so there you are, some random reports from my on-going “adventure” in the sri sri.
