Ancient Buddhist temple caves, Dambulla, Sri Lanka 
weekend monsoon rains flood nearby rivers and surrounding homesNew Years Eve in Colombo was a blast! My LEO hosts, Anne, Amal, and Si, reserved a table at one the beachside hangouts where we spent the night drinking and dancing and laughing as we watched the locals set off fireworks on the beach (and almost set themselves and some passersby on fire!) My hosts showed me around Colombo for the first few days, giving me some time to get acclimated to my new environment, before bringing me to the elephant reserve here in Kegalle.
I love Sri Lanka! All of the locals smile at you when you walk past them on the street and they're always willing to help out an occasional confused tourist like myself. It's a beautiful country. On my way to town in one of the tuk-tuks, I pass by rice paddy fields with lush, green forest in the backdrop - truly picturesque. The food is purrrfectly spicy. I wake up unusually early these days, before 6am on most mornings (shocking, I know), and as the sky begins to brighten, you hear one bird chirp, then a couple more, then 10, then it seems like hundreds begin to sound off at once, all with a distinct chirp. It sounds just like one of those sound machines that help people relax, but instead of coming from a little box, it's outside my window.
While the locals are very friendly face-to-face, they seem to take out all their aggression on the road. Can you say road rage? Every road is two lanes, one in each direction, but you wouldn't know it the way they all swerve around one another, blasting their horn, racing down the middle of the road between two, sometimes three cars going 30-40 miles an hour, at least one of which going the opposite direction. A honk from the horn seems to mean "Watch out! I don't want to hit you, but I will!!!" Vehicles literally come within inches of each other, and, since there doesn't seem to be any highways and the roads rarely have sidewalks, cars are constantly coming dangerously close to pedestrians, which is the scariest thing of all! My heart has stopped quite a few times witnessing this madness, so I've learned to just close my eyes until I get where I'm going. One of the mahouts offered to let me drive his motorcycle - I told him he was insane.
There are 8 elephants on the reserve right now, but it seems to change day-to-day. My elephant is Madhu, the youngest at 16. He is very cute, still smaller than the others. On the weekdays, I clean Madhu's bed around 730, then around 8, I go to the river to bathe him with shaved down coconut shells. Scrubbing him is hard work! Hopefully I'll have some guns by the time I leave here! Madhu just lays in the river, very still like he's getting a massage, as I scrub away. It's kind of exhilarating being in a river, bathing this massive animal that could turn over and smash me to bits in a second if he really wanted to...but he doesn't. With one-word from Sanjiva, the mahout, Madhu raises his foot or his ear or his tail or whatever Sanjiva asks - Madhu seems to know at least 100 commands - it's pretty amazing to watch the two of them together. After the bath, I give Madhu his daily vitamin clump along with some bananas that I save from breakfast and then I go to work in the garden for a couple hours. In the afternoon the volunteers switch off teaching English to some of the local kids, assisting the mobile vet, and helping the elephants paint.
I live in a bungalow with 8 other volunteers ranging in age from 19 to upper 40s. I share a room with a Dutch girl named Simone, who is very sweet. Then there are 4 British girls roomed together, a woman from Denmark has a room to herself across the hall from me, and a German guy & an American guy from Cleveland stay in the room next to mine. It feels like college all over again.
The volunteers usually go off on the weekends and this weekend I toured around the hillside with one of the British girls and the other American. Had a great time!
For the first time in a looooooooong time, I'm actually excited about Monday! I love working with Madhu and Sanjiva. I look forward to it every morning.
I hope you all have a happy Monday!
