12-12-05
Today is our son David's birthday. Thrity-three and kicking. Happy Birthday David.

Yesterday, Sunday, we came to Nuwara Eliya where Ron is doing a two day workshop and on Wednesday morning he has a meeting with the local authorities. We read the schedule that said we were leaving at noon, but Ron thought we were leaving at 1:00. We left at 2:00. We call it Sri Lanka time.

Nuwara Eliya is at 6,000 feet so the weather is delighfully cool here. I actually wore my light wool jacket last night. It took 5.5 hours to get here (65-70 miles). Our other car got here in 4.5 hrs. which is a record but they didn't have an overheated radiator and have to wait by the spring, filling litre bottles to cool off the engine and then refill the radiator.

This is the tea plantation area that I have written about before. We got home from Hikkaduwa Friday night about 8:00 pm and had a wonderful dinner in the refrigerator that Geeta, our housekeeper, had prepared. What a delight! We had potato curry with rice, green beans with tomatoes, and a wonderful eggplant dish. I had given her $5.00 for shopping. In addition to the groceries, she bought a bucket for housecleaning and I had $1.65 in change. Did I tell you I bought a tape measure (15 ft and it cost $1.40 or $1.60 I can't remember which)?

Our bed finally arrived. We ordered it Nov 4 and we got it Saturday. Unfortunatley, we did not realize that it came with a mattress so we now have three matresses. We bought mattress for $175 each. Our bed iscustom made as we changed measurements (taller) and had it built out of larger stock (we call it Bergman built. For those of you who know Ron well, you know he likes big and heavy.) and it cost $315 including the mattress. Amazing! I don't think we will adjust to the cost of things here.

Today I am going jacket shopping for David. Nuwara Eliya is famous for its stalls that sell name brand winter parkers for a few dollars: Columbia Sportswear, Gap, Nike, etc. I'll report back how I do.

That's it for today from the central hills of Sri Lanka.