The monsoons have arrived. So far every night around dusk the sky unzips and buckets pour with thunder and lightning to add to the excitement. That lasts for about an hour then the rain is reduced to a drizzle for much of the evening. It makes for a very cool evening time and I love it. The monsoons are predicted for the next two months. Yeehaa! I won’t be complaining about the rain.

Well I started this a week ago and things have changed. It now rains any time of day or night and on Friday it pretty much rained all day. The streets are flooded and now 225,000 Sri Lankans have been left homeless due to flooding. People throw their garbage into the canals thus plugging them up and cause overflowing and flooding. DUH! I never cease to be amazed at people’s lack of forethought with their actions. On the up side it is cool for now. Getting my laundry dry is a challenge however.

We have had a great week with our visitor from California, Zarka Popovic. She accompanied Ron to work every day and did some pro bono work. He is most grateful as he nears the end of his time on the project. On Friday we met for lunch and I took her shopping for gifts. We ended the day with a grim Iranian film that was the first movie filmed in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. We followed the movie with a lovely dinner at an Indian restaurant where we had a fabulous vegetarian meal.

On Saturday (yesterday) she headed for the hills, literally. She took off for Nuwara Eliya, Kandy and Sigiriya. She will return on Monday. Because yesterday was the first day of peace talks between the LTTE and the government, there was heightened security. That manifested in road checks of every vehicle that came into Colombo. So Zarka’s driver was two hours late, Geetha was two hours late and Mr. Kularathna was one and a half hours late. What a pain in the neck!

We are beginning to think about leaving our home on Thimbirigasyaya Rd. So Ron is patching holes in the walls caused by hanging paintings and I am cleaning out drawers, closets and cabinets. I am giving a lot of things to Geetha and she is thrilled. We are moving into that phase where we are experiencing a lot of ‘lasts’ such as the last meal of Geetha’s string hoppers, the last time I will see the recycling team that collects our recyclables, etc.

In SL near the end of the year, the tradition is to give money to those who have served you throughout the year. So you would give money to the mail carrier, the newspaper delivery person and the trash collectors. So I have prepared my envelopes and as I enter this phase of lasts I am starting to give out the $’s. I’m not so sure the recipients understand why they are getting their gifts early but it doesn’t seem to matter as most of the recipients make so little money anything is appreciated.

The time will start to fly now as we leave Tuesday for work related travel. We will be gone for ten days and I am guessing in some of the villages we will have no or limited access to the Internet. We will return on November 10th and with any luck we will have news that the Democrats are taking control of Congress. We will have the weekend to pack as the shipping agent arrives early Tuesday morning Nov 14th to pack up our things to ship to the US and to Thailand. We have been here just over a year. Hard to believe. We will move into the Cinnamon Grand hotel, which is where we lived when we first arrived. Somehow it will be easier this time as we know the area and will have more options for places to eat, know where we can go for walks, etc. I am hopeful that we can pack in a way that will allow us to store some of the suitcases that we won’t need and thus give us more space in the room.

I am planning a small graduation celebration for the girls at Shilpa who have completed the career development class. Ron has created a certificate with each girl’s name that one of the trustees and I will sign. I am giving each girl a hand painted box from India and some money. That will be the week before we leave for Thailand.
Well that’s what’s happening in paradise five degrees above the equator. Pray that the peace talks move forward. This place needs a break!!