Okay, I think that I was mistaken. Anyway, stage 2 of 3 is almost over. My classes are coming to a close, my papers are due, the dance/drum performance is soon, and I'm organizing independant study. For those of you who haven't heard, I'm going to be doing it on Angampora, a native Sri Lankan martial art. It was taught and practiced since ancient times by the soldiers, with certain styles reserved for princes and royalty. In some periods of history, it was also practiced as a blood sport in gladiatorial arenas. The style includes both armed and unarmed combat. In ancient times there were 21 weapon styles, but due to Colonial interference most of the weapon styles were lost. Now, weapons are mostly restricted to the sword, dagger, staff, spear, and serrated whip.
When the British finally conquered the Kandian Kingdom (the last part of Sri Lanka to be conquered), they outlawed the practice of angampora. Anyone caught teaching or practicing was shot in the kneecap, so the art had to be continued in secret, mostly along family lines. Only recently has it re-emerged, and I've found a couple of teachers that I can learn from.
I'll be spending part of my time in the village of Dewalegama, and part of my time staying just outside of Columbo and commuting in, as long as safety permits. I'll be checking regularly with the embassy on that one, and my program director and everyone at ISLE has contacts all over the place, and they have a careful eye on the situation, so...yeah. I should be fine. I don't want to get intimidated by the situation here. I'll keep a very careful eye on the situation, and be hyper-vigilant and aware of my surroundings. But...you have to live life. As I was telling Ben (my brother), if you're born and you're alive, you run the distinct risk of dying someday. But that doesn't stop you from living. Even if you had a choice of whether or not to be born, I hope you would choose to. Just so, you need to live life to the fullest, as long as you're not a damn fool and do something completely reckless for little gain. Anyway: Pictures! (from the cultural triangle tour)

This is why we didn't go all the way up to the lion's paws in Siigiria. About 20 German tourists were up there singing at the top of their lungs. Nice sign though, no?

Monitor lizard. Very, very cool. I want one of these in my bathroom.

Hello to all of my fans (and other inanimate objects in my possession)!
Also, hello to friends and family.

I've taken to playing a couple of popular* games here. The first game is played mostly amongst the ISLE students here**, and it's called "Guess which giant, unwelcome invertebrate will be in my bathroom tonight." So far, I've encountered a giant cockroach, a giant beetle, a giant slug (or may have been a snail), and of course the infamous giant spider. I accidentally stepped on a centipede on my way TO the bathroom, but I don't think that counts. Also, a couple of winged insects were trying to mate on my bed, and that was WAY inappropriate.

Sri Lanka certainly does help put things in perspective though. Of course, there are the sobering things like poverty, freedom, peace, etc. that SL puts in perspective. On a lighter note though, where else would I think something like "EEEEK! ...Oh, thank God! It's only a giant cockroach."

My birthday celebration was stellar. My amma baked a pinapple cake for me, and my atamma (grandmother) decorated it. It was delicious. They also made some western food for me, including a pasta and vegetable dish that was divine. Best of all though, the rest of the family came over. My uncle and aunt are real characters, and it was a real pleasure to have them. People brought gifts too! It was so unexpected and wonderful! My family gave me a tailored shirt and matching sarong, my grandmother gave me a shirt that looks pretty good on me, my uncle gave me a sweet looking sarong, and my aunt gave me a book on buddhism. It was a good night.

Okay, the rest of the posting will have to wait 'till another time. I may be wrong, but I think there's a couple doing something uncomfortable right next to me. Take care!

*compared to the sport of full contact duck duck goose
**Whether they want to play or not

Spider Pics, Independant Study, etc.

Hey folks,


Meet Harry, AKA Muffin, AKA Feast of a Thousand Nights, AKA "HOLY !#$^$%&! THERE'S A GIANT SPIDER IN MY BATHROOM!"


In any case, I've got a much clearer picture, but it goes along with a story that should probably be told in person. This should suffice to give you some sense of scale. Sure, I'm still 200X its size, but hey, it's a spider. So I'm going to be girly about it. I think I've mentioned this in the comments, but I haven't seen the spider for the past 2 and a half weeks. So...maybe it's gone?

In other news, my cut is healing very well. It's actually really amazing how the body can heal sometimes. There was one morning where I had a scarlet slash across my thumb, and by the afternoon, it was skin grown over most of it. Wow.

This Saturday I'm going to visit a possible independant study site. I'm thinking of doing Angampora, a traditional martial art native to Sri Lanka. It was banned during colonial rule, and was taught in secret during that time, and it has only recently resurfaced. I'm not quite sure what to think of it though. Some of the (very few) sites seem like it's a legitimate art, way of life, etc. Some sites seem like the people are caught up in their egos, trying to be manly men, and are only interested in who they can or cannot beat up. I guess I'll learn more soon. Could be really cool!

Never Have I Ever...

Sunday, I drank human blood at a local orphanage.
I should probably back up though. We were volunteering at an orphanage in Kandy today, and we were painting a room for them, and cleaning the kitchen. The paint was in a handy dandy plastic container that required you to cut along the outside of it before it could be opened. Luckily, I had a swiss army knife with me, which I then used to cut the plastic strip and part of my thumb. It was deep enough that it bled a lot, so I put it in my mouth while someone dug up a first aid kit. I’m fine, and I have every hope that it’ll heal without complication. Of course, this means that during a game of “never have I ever,” I can no longer say “never have I ever drunk human blood in a Sri Lankan orphanage.” (for those of you familiar with that game.) Max, can I get 5 bonus xp for character research beyond the call of duty?
After volunteering, we went back to the ISLE center to watch a movie called “Grizzly Man.” When I get back to school, we should watch it together. It’s a documentary about a man who spent 13 consecutive summers filming and living among grizzly bears. It’s really a funny movie, I think without meaning to be, because this guy was crazy. I think. He had a boundless love for the bears and nature though. In any case, I think that any description of the movie will fall short, so we should watch it together sometime, and laugh.

Elephant Orphanage

Today, we went to an elephant orphanage in the town of Piniwela. Wow. What can I say about that? The elephants were amazing. There were probably about 20 of them there, and when we went they were bathing in the river. The group included both males and females, grown ups and babies as young as one month. One of the elephants there, sadly, had only 3 feet because it had stepped on a landmine in Jaffna. The babies were really cute though, so it sort of makes up for that sad story.
They were tame elephants, with mahouts to give them direction, so I got to touch one’s trunk. It was really cool. At one point, who knows what triggered it, but the elephants started trumpeting and calling to one another, and gathered around the biggest elephant in the herd. Something I didn’t know before today is that elephants have their trumpeting call, but they also have a call that sounds like a deep, loud, rumbling growl. After visiting the elephant orphanage, we stopped by a place where we payed $4.50 and took a short ride on an elephant. SO worth it.
Unfortunately, my camera was out of batteries, so I don’t have pictures right now. Other people took pictures though, some with me in them. They might show up on the ISLE website soon. I think Sophie and Mom have the website address.

Food

Sri Lanka is a forge for the stomach. From a Sri Lankan point of view, it seems as though if it doesn’t try to rip a hole in your mouth and stomach wall, where’s the fun? This isn’t to say that Sri Lankan food isn’t tasty, or that there aren’t milder dishes. Almost everything has at least a little bit of kick though. My favorite food here is “roti,” which is a flatbread made with scraped coconut, flour, and a dash of saltwater. It’s eaten with jam, butter, or more typically with “lunumiris” A.K.A. Sri Lankan dynamite. This paste like substance is made by grinding chilies together with salt, then adding lime juice and red onions. As long as you like things spicy, it’s actually quite delicious!

Another example of Sri Lanka strengthening the stomach is when I felt nauseous shortly after arriving here, they gave me a traditional remedy of lime juice, with so much salt mixed in that a thick, salty slush was left at the bottom after drinking it. It didn’t make me feel any better. (to be fair though, the tums I had with me didn’t make me feel any better either.)

However, in general I’m growing a bit tired of Sri Lankan food, since almost every meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner) is eaten with rice.

Art and Lit. Fieldtrip

Since it’s a bit late (9:00 pm! Gasp!) I’ll be brief about this now, and recount more later, or when I get back. First, we started our journey by going to our professor’s house to look at his private collection of art work. Some of it, I really, really liked. By the way, he paid $100 US dollars for his land up in the Kandian hills. Before you get too excited, that’s not typical here, but it’s insane that it’s possible to get land that cheap, no? Anyway, next we had lunch at the ISLE center, and the prof traveled with us to a city a few hours away where we toured an artist’s studio/home to see his work, then saw a play in Sinahala about torture, crooked politicians, and freedom of the press. The next day, we saw about 4 or 5 more art galleries, and spoke with Tissa Abeysekera, the author of one of the novellas we read for class. Then, we came home. It was really a great trip. I think my favorite part was meeting that artist on the first day. He was all smiles, and full of energy. He was boyishly excited to show us all of the works he’d done in the past, and the ones he’s working on now. He’d laugh self-consciously at anything he’d done with a sexual theme, and he had a great sense of humor that showed through in his political cartoons. For instance, there’s one where there’s a scene from hell, and all the demons are vaccinating the hell hounds against the politicians. In any case, we’ll see if this materializes, but he said he’d draw each of us some little doodle before we left for the states (and this is a guy who sells paintings for $40,000 to $50,000 regularly). He was really a great guy.

Finally, it’s Thursday evening and I’ve got some space to breathe, and to write. Let’s try to recount things chronologically.

Nilambe
Two weeks ago we went to the Nilambe meditation center. Not sure that I’ve talked about that yet. So, it’s this beautiful meditation retreat up in the mountains. It’s a pretty international group of people living there. In any case, while there we did different sorts of meditation. One type was just being aware of the present moment, without necessarily trying to focus your attention. Just being aware of what you’re doing here and now, and when your mind wanders, being aware of what it’s wandering to. This mindfulness was practiced in sitting, standing, and walking postures. Later, we did a meditation on “loving-kindness,” Which involves first concentrating only on yourself, and thinking kind loving thoughts about yourself. Gradually, you extend this loving feeling to someone you know well and like, someone you know casually, someone you dislike, and to all living beings.
I can’t say that I got tons out of either of these meditation sessions, but I did really enjoy the people there. From the things they said and the way they interacted with the world, they seemed as though they’d accumulated a great deal of wisdom and insight through meditation.
Anyway, after the meditation, we did some yoga (taught by one of the people living there), which was an interesting experience. We also took a short (5 min) walk up the hill a ways and encountered two things:
1) An absolutely beautiful view of the valley below. (I'll upload pics when I can)
2) Tons, and tons of leeches.

I could have stayed the night at the meditation center, but my brain seemed a little full for the day, and I had to decide at the last minute, and so I went home. I’d really love to go back sometime while I’m here though. It really seems like a great environment to live in.

I know a few of you have been wanting pictures. Tech is really slow here so I've been reluctant to try to load big files, but today it's behaving so...here's a couple. I've got over 300, and it seems ridiculous to choose two. I chose these two pretty much at random though, from my northern tour. The top one is the biggest Stupa in Sri Lanka. The second is the view from the 3rd hotel we stayed at, in Polunaruwa. It was the second nicest hotel we stayed at, but I didn't get any pictures of the other one. No...I'm not a tourist here. I'm a student! Riiiiiiiight.

Hello, my name is...

Sorry I haven’t updated in awhile. It’s because I’ve been having trouble logging into Blogger. That being the case, I’m not sure whether this will end up being posted as a blog or being sent around by the nice people I send it to.

Anyway, lots to say. This is only one of them. More as soon as I have time and a working technological infrastructure.

I finally got to see one of the big spiders here. It was in my bathroom, on the wall, behind the door. My reaction was to recoil, stare for awhile in facination/horror, then go get my camera (rather, Annie’s camera. Thank you Annie!). The spider, to his credit, was pretty chill about the whole thing, and was content to just sit there.

I took a few moments to put the camera on what seemed a correct setting (Pet: dark cat). When I entered the bathroom again, it was gone. Now…if there’s anything worse than seeing a giant spider on your wall, it’s not seeing a giant spider on your wall, when he was definitely there a second ago. I figured I’d used up my bravery quota for the day, and so I summoned my Appachi to find and get rid of it for me. He didn’t find it, so we assume that it left via the window.

Fine. Gone, and no worries. Except that he decided that he liked my bathroom, and decided to stay the night. That worked out okay. Again, he was very still. It was actually good in a way, because I had to stay up late and write a paper that night. Every time I started feeling tired, I opened up my bathroom door, stared at the spider for awhile, and I didn’t feel like going to sleep anymore.

In the morning, I looked around, and he was gone…or so it seems. I actually found him after some searching. Ask me to imitate it when I get back. My reaction was actually pretty hillarious. I didn’t scream, other than that my reaction was comparable to an 8 year old girl’s. Again, got my Appachi, who caught and removed it.

Now, for those of you who are thinking: “Removed? Why not kill it or flush it down the toilet?” First of all, buddhist country. No killing things if it can be helped. Second of all, these aren’t the sort of spiders you just step on. And flushing this spider would be comparable to flushing a chipmunk. It’s just not going to work out too well. In any case, Appachi removed it without incident.

One or two days later, I left my bathroom door open when I went to dinner (I usually keep it latched.) It seems that the spider likes my bathroom, but where he really wants to be is in my room. As soon as he saw the door was open, he must have booked it out of the bathroom, because when I got back from dinner he was chillin’ on the curtain that serves as a door to my room. “Appachi! I’ve got a visitor again! He’s got 8 legs and he’s really scary!”

It’s at this point that I learned the spiders have essentially 3 modes: Chill mode, where it’s motionless, Creepy Mode, where they do a slow, ominious crawl to where they want to go, and Freak Out Mode, where they go really fast. It’s at these last times that you realize that they don’t build webs. They chase their prey down, tackle it, and eat it. No idea what it is they eat though…

In any case, you’ve all got homework. I figure the only way this spider is going to be less threatening to me is if he has a name. Could be either a boy or a girl’s name. In any case, I’d feel better if I could gasp in surprise, then say admonishingly “Oh, it’s only you. Geeze Gary, don’t scare me like that.” Or “Shirly, you know you’re not allowed in the house. Get out of here before I have Appachi throw you out!” Or “Krogax, I call upon thee! Smite mine enemies!” Y’know. Whatever the situation calls for. So yeah, each of you needs to suggest a name for my “pet” spider. Classic, nutty, cute, epic, whatever you think it should be.