We are definitely in the count down mode. We have 11 more weeks here. The last four weeks we will spend either in a hotel or in a furnished apartment that we will rent from TAF if they have a suitable one available. I know some of you (Penney) would find it hard to believe but living in a hotel, even a four-five star hotel, can be tiresome. You don’t have windows you can open for fresh air, you eat too much because many of the meals are served buffet and gosh you wouldn’t want to hurt the chef’s feeling by not trying all his/her dishes. Then there’s that dessert table. You resolve that you are only going over there for the fresh fruit and you come back with fruit and three desserts! Oy!! You are confined to one room plus a bathroom. I could go on but I’m sure you get the picture. So we shall see. We have been given a definite date from the shippers to come and pack us up: November 14th. Talk about synchronicity, our lease is up on Nov 14th!!

I am somewhat restless, as I am not working on furnishing our house or the Thai house so there no need to be out and about seeking needed items and checking prices. I enjoy my time with the young women at Shilpa but am bored with career development. Ron is gone this week to Nuwara Eliya (in the hill country where it is always cool, probably 20 degrees cooler than Colombo) and is due back Saturday night. So I am going to a movie Saturday afternoon and tonight. Neither is showing in theaters but rather in small venues and are free, a price I can’t resist. We still are without television (since June) although the lawsuit is nearly resolved and we are told that with a week or so they will be back up and running. We shall see. Things don’t usually go according to plan here.

Currently I am researching places we might go to for our anniversary at the end of November. Gosh could it really be our 21st?? Lordy it seems just yesterday I spied that cute Ron Bergman across the foyer of the Wiseman Center at Rogue Community College and said “WHO is THAT?” thinking what a cutie. Well that was 1981 and we started dating in the spring of 1982 and were married near the end of 1985. He is even cuter after all these years. I’m keeping him! As Rachel, our daughter-in-love, would say ‘ I got me a cute one’. So back to my research. I’m looking at Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and of course our beloved Thailand. It is the closest and I am remembering Chaam where we can lay on the beach under a thatched roof and get foot massages for $3.00 an hour and it is hard to resist but we’ve never been to Malaysia and Singapore is rather romantic too. We were there in 1997. It’s all fantasy at this point as Ron may we too tired from work to go anywhere. There’s also a way cool romantic boutique hotel a few hours down the coast in Galle that we discovered on our last trip there. If any of you readers have been to Kuala Lumpur and care to comment I’d sure be interested in hearing from you. I would actually prefer to go to a smaller city but we don’t have much time and I don’t want to spend it all getting to our destination. We considered the Maldives but it appears to cost and arm and leg both to fly there and stay there. But the place seems to have one industry: TOURISM!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about our time here and have even started making a list of things I will miss and won’t miss about SL. The ‘I will miss’ list is much longer than the ‘I won’t’ list. When we were leaving the US I asked Ron if having been in the US for three weeks made if difficult to go back to SL. He said no and I agreed. Now that I am here, I am finding some things difficult. I seem to be even less tolerant than before, hard to imagine. The garbage that is strewed in the streets disgusts me. It still irritates me after almost a year. I have to keep reminding myself if you have never experienced the difference, then you don’t know how much better it can be when things are clean. I also have to remind myself that not everyone has a garbage can in which to store their garbage so throwing it in the street is a better option than having it rot in your home. Each morning on my walk this week, I pass a bit of grass where someone has dumped his or her plastic bag of garbage. It is right next to a small canal that carries water to a larger canal. Crows, cats and dogs have managed to tear open the bag and now garbage is strewn hither and yon and into the canal, impeding water flow, making it a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes and Dengue fever! I am tired of being hot and sweaty (amazing that I am considering more tropical countries for our anniversary) but remind myself how cold, dark and wet the NW will be in late December when we return. And let’s face it; there are the closest countries to us, not requiring a visa prior to arrival. The grass is always greener…I’ll let you know about our final decision as to where to go for our anniversary.

Not much else to report at this point. That’s it for today from Sri Lanka where the men are gorgeous, the weather is sultry and Ron and Tricia are having a grand adventure.