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Published: January 7th 2014
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Tailor
Tangalle Matt and I ran some errands in Weligama yesterday. We needed to buy and mail a birthday card, pick up some electrician's tape, and find a couple of gifts and wrapping paper. Easy, right? Well, surprisingly, it was. On our way out of the last shop, bags in hand, gifts pre-wrapped per our request, we laughed as we recalled a similar outing, undertaken our first week in Sri Lanka. The list that day was short: tape, thread and needle, and postcards. We asked many people for help but the directions were difficult for us to understand and if we were able to find the right place, it was closed or didn't have what we needed. After 2 hours of wandering around we left completely defeated.
I guess we have adapted.
Yesterday, with our list completed after 30 minutes, we decided to take the back way out of town to Kapparathota and stopped at a quiet "cool spot" for a Lion ginger beer and to reflect on how much more comfortable we feel here now. It's amazing what just learning to count to 10 in Sinhala has done for our shopping experiences. Buying a book of short stories by a
Sri Lankan writer has helped too. But mostly it's been talking with people and eating and joking with them that has helped us to understand the culture. Just knowing that we can exchange a few words in their language feels so good. I even caught our friend Ashan trying to cheat at cards by talking to his partner in Sinhalese. When I understood that he was announcing what cards he was holding I outed him and we all laughed.
When Matt and I left Vancouver we imagined, perhaps naively, that we would come to Sri Lanka, find a place to live, and settle down for a while. Matt and I are not backpackers. We like to quietly grow into a place and build relationships with people. But primary on our list for this trip was a place we could freedive easily, and we have been unable to find it in this beautiful country ringed by a shallow shelf.
But we're grateful it was our first introduction to SE Asia. While traveling around we figured out how to distinguish touts from regular people who are just trying to help, and how to deal with them, rode a bunch of
trains and memorized the schedules, developed tastes for our favourite Sinhalese and Tamil food and learned the difference. I guess it was good that we started our trip in relatively untouched Weligama. We were shocked when we visited tourist areas like Mirissa and Tangalle and saw tourists in bikinis and one even in a thong (a thong!) when we'd made such an effort to get me into the water without exposing any leg or shoulder. I've re-learned that smiling at people when I'm being stared at goes a very long way and that we packed way, way too much stuff. Because of that we spent 3 1/2 hours at a Post Office one afternoon just to ship a few cold weather clothes home and I was forced to concede to Matt that maybe three pairs of sandals were too many.
So it seems that after almost 2 months we are counting down our last few days in Sri Lanka in search of our freediving Mecca in SE Asia and a place to unpack our bags for at least a month. Though we have stayed at some lovely guesthouses (and some pretty nasty ones too) we both love to nest,
Family Beach Day
Weligama - Men in shorts, women in dresses and the constant movement from bed to bed has been difficult.
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Dawn
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Ahhh...
What a lovely entry. I will be anticipating your next move (literally). I hope you locate the dive spot you are hoping to find with the dream home to accompany it. We all wait in eager anticipation. Love, love...