Photos of India and World’s End have been posted www.rtsla.photofreeway.com

Today is August14th and I just go a text message from the US Embassy that another bomb went off in Colombo killing 7, injuring 15. I can’t help but believe we will be leaving before December. The war continues to escalate and the cease fire is a joke!

We are in Hikkaduwa, probably 100 kilometers from Colombo so we are safe. Please remember that we have had our horoscope done recently (third time in recent years) and consistently we have been told that we will not die by accident and that we will live until our 80’s/90’s. You just have to trust some things in life! We are trusting that we aren’t done yet so we will be fine.

So here’s my blog for today. Some people wonder what the heck I do all day long when traveling with Ron while he is working so today was pretty typical. After breakfast I sat out on the porch of the hotel and read today’s newspaper, depressing to say the least as the war seems to get worse each day. We are enjoying cooler weather with a cloud cover and light ocean breezes. Our hotel sits right on the ocean (yes it was hit by the tsunami but the damaged part has been completely redone) overlooking a coral reef. After finishing the paper, I went to the Internet café and answered email that took about an hour.

Then I browsed shops along the highway looking at batiks, a challenge given that there is no shoulder and buses whiz by at breakneck speed. Pedestrian beware! Sri Lanka has a number of needy people so any time you are out walking they will approach you and want to take you to “their” shops. So today I was approached twice. I managed to dump one of them but the second one I couldn’t resist as he wanted to take me off the main drag where all the tourist (higher priced goods) shops are. So we are walking along a residential road and I dawns on me how trusting I am being, Am I getting ready to be mugged, I ask myself? Then I come to my senses and realize I am in a residential area and one loud scream will bring many running to my rescue. I am loud! Instead of being mugged, he took me to probably the best batik shop I have even been to. I came away with a lovely tablecloth for home; beautiful blues and white that will look swell with my dishes and is a lovely reminder of Sri Lanka. Then I went back to the hotel and had a leisurely lunch on the veranda, overlooking the ocean and listening to waves crash on the shore. I never go to the ocean that I don’t think of my dear old departed mom.

At 2:00 I was on the lawn under a tree facing the ocean and reading my novel (Thank you Susan Hathaway Marxer). I watched as one of the gardening staff climbed the coconut trees with no rope and no shoes, sort of like a monkey and went clear to the top to pull off dead branches with one hand while holding on for dear life with the other. The lawn has a stick fence enclosing it. Outside the fence there were five men hoping a hotel guest would come near the fence so they could persuade them to take their glass bottom boat out to the coral reef for viewing. I refuse to go as the reef is threatened by all the viewing activity.

I read until 3:30. Now I am back at the Internet café posting this blog. By the time I get back Ron will probably be home from working with his team of consultants and staff interviewing members of the local authority to assess how his program is working. Hikkaduwa is the fist city they are assessing and there will be four more I think after today. We will be on the road this entire week, returning to Colombo on Sunday evening. So it seems after today’s message our timing for leaving Colombo is a good thing!

DON’T Worry. We are hunky dory in paradise five degrees north of the equator.