My departure from Sri Lanka was understated. I said my goodbyes to Kara and Keven, dismissing the sentimentality. “I’ll write you an email”, I replied, a cheap reference to an interconnected digital world. I should have said “I’ll miss you too”, but that might have been to close to the loss. The taxi had arrived early, and only as I sped off to the airport did I realized how much of a home Sri Lanka had become.

One red-eye later, I am back in Bangkok with the strange obligation of taking a vacation. As my cab slowly worked its way through downtown Bangkok toward my hotel, I couldn’t help but feel a recently familiar anxiety.

“You can always change your tickets,” Keven said when I told him that part of me felt anxious to get back to the United States. Skeptical that he was implying that I should once again extend my stay in Sri Lanka, I reassured the status quo, and my vacation, by quickly adding “it will be good for me.”

But it is more than this. I am not just leaving the country, I am also leaving my job and my life in Salt Lake. While out of the country, I received a job offer inviting me to come work at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C. It seems this association, where I have been teaching, would like me as a Senior Programmer. The offer is good, the opportunities and timing are right, and while I have logistically accepted the offer, I am waiting for my emotions to catch up. I find myself asking existential questions. “Why do people leave?”, “Why do people stay?”, and “What makes something a good decision?”

Ted, my boss, had sent me an email a few days before in response to my resignation. “I believe that the best decision would be to have Kara steal your passport and ticket back to the US and keep you trapped in Sri Lanka as a slave under corporate ownership. However, for some reason that seems to be socially unacceptable.

“Although you will be leaving our firm,” he continued, “I prefer to think of your departure as an indefinite ‘leave of absence’ or sabbatical.”

And so I leave knowing that if I don’t like D.C. I can always return. But I know that I will, and so I won’t. Paradoxically, that is the problem.

Cheri, the Brooklyn based massage therapist I met at 30,000 feet on my last trip to D.C. had sent an email informing me that my emotional moon sign was Cancer. I couldn’t help but think of my brother-in-law. “Cancers, we’re crabs,” he once said, pinching his hands like ad-hoc claws, “we build nests.” And he would begin to dig in the imaginary sand. My temporary nest in Seeduwa now abandoned, returning to Salt Lake promises an emotional security that Bangkok will make me temporarily forego. But even that nest in Salt Lake now seems somehow insufficient.

I received the job offer last Saturday, minutes before I waltzed out the door to Sri Pada. However, as the train lazily climbed the hill country, my excitement slowly gave way to the emotional implications of my impending move and the existential questions took on a different tone. “How can people leave?”

Restless before the climb, I laid in bed wishing in vain that life would somehow slow down long enough for me to regain my footing. A brief respite before the next adventure was all I wanted. Simultaneously optimistic and saddened at the change, I searched in vain for a way to mourn a loss about which only I knew, knowing that if I could just break down I would get the catharsis I so desperately needed.

Instead I was left with questions, most importantly this: “What makes home?”

Funny, I suppose, that crabs build nests in something as impermanent as sand.

All good things come to an end. Today is my last day in Sri Lanka, and I am not sure I will ever come back. A month in a foreign country — not too shabby.

Reflecting on the time, the changes are funny. My feet are constantly dirty, and my hair, ravaged by the humidity has just given up and turned into a British fro, if such a thing exists. My mom would cry. I have been so busy while here that it has been hard to keep up with myself.

It would have made sense to learn some Sinhala while I was here, but for some reason I never did. Somehow in my personal labor camp it seemed unimportant. One more victim of lack of time. Yesterday, however, in the emotional preparations for my return, a classic moment crossed the line, linking this life to my past.

“How do you say ‘no’?”, I asked Kara. She had been yelling at a driver who had intentionally taken us out of our way in order to make some extra cash.

She looked at me, stunned at the realization that I had somehow missed these essentials. “Nae” (sounds like “Neh”), she said. I looked back at her and burst into hysterics.

“What?” she asked, my laughter having scared the driver back onto the right course. Kara had said this so many time during my time in Sri Lanka, and I had always found it a bit amusing. Carly, in moments of indifference or annoyance would respond in exactly the same way. “Neh.” I assumed that Kara was doing the same. To find out that all this time Carly had been accurately expressing her emotions in Sinhala was a bit too much.

The other day, Carly sent me an email. “Write in your blog”, she said. The truth is that I have a half dozen half finished entries that I have been to busy to finish. So, in short Carly, “Nae.”

There is a line, or at least a rough space, at which your lines are crossed. In a country where the color of your skin is the best indication of status, walking down the street is enough to draw attention. Everyone seems desperate to be friendly, at least with your wallet, and the propositions, even if only for attention, can become overwhelming.

While everyone seems desperate to try out that one English word they know, no where was this more apparent that during the hike up Sri Pada. The stairs were scattered with teenagers, emboldened by the social credit they were sure to receive from their peers. These interactions, however, which had little if anything to do with me, don’t compare to when that one word is intended to obligate you into handing over money.

Of course this works both ways. “Where are you from?” was far too common a starting place. Pretending I didn’t speak English became a favorite tactic. While in Kandy, a English tourist asked me, “Are your from Canada or the United States?”, apologizing for being unable to place my accent. From that point on when asked the tiresome question, my tactic changed to one of an assumed nationality. “Canada”, I would say, beaming proudly.

And so I was caught of guard one day in Kandy, when a man responded by saying “What part? Ontario?”

“Oh, no no”, I said, trying to catch my balance and distance myself at the same time. “Vancouver.”

“Oh Vancouver!” I was about to learn this was not the right answer. “I used to live there.” Apparently this man who spoke more than just one word of English, but wanted my money none the less, went to school in Vancouver. He precede to rattle off a list of his favorite spots, places about which I was now obligated to enthusiastically reminisce.

I refused his taxi service, explaining that I was going to the train station and would like to walk. “Ah yes,” he said, “Canada very big, you guys like walking.” 15 minutes later, and completely lost, I hired a trishaw to drive me. It was one block away.

And so it was that Kara, Keven and I were taking a walk, with more success this time, to dinner. We were discussing Jaffna, and the possibility of Kara visiting, or rather the lack thereof. Jaffna, at the northern tip of Sri Lanka is home to largest concentration of Hindus, Tamils, and the Tiger rebel group. Things are decidedly restless, which I secretly think made Kara all the more restless to go. No one was exactly sure how long the trip there would take, but the consensus was two days by train. Sri Lanka isn’t that big, really, the trains are just that slow.

“I don’t think so”, Keven said to the ad-hoc itinerary, met by a stream of Kara’s faux protests.

Just at that moment, a trishaw pulled up. “Where you go?” the driver said, spouting off another common favorite.

“How much to Jaffna?” Kara spouted, spinning in his direction. The driver was too stunned to reply, and Kara, like the rest of us, could have looked over her shoulder and seen that personal line go right on by. “We go to Jaffna, and then you wait two hours, and come back. How much? 300 Rupees?”

I would have felt sorry for the man, but I was laughing too hard.

Amitha and Anjuna were excited to hear of my plans to visit Sri Pada. I had decided that I couldn’t leave Sri Lanka with out having gone to climb this mountain. Also commonly known as Adam’s Peak, it sits at the top of Sri Lankan geography and has been a pilgrimage for over a thousand years. In the center of Sri Lanka, Lonely Planet had described getting to the peak as “simple.” This statement, however, was followed by a page worth of explanations that demonstrated everything but this fact. I was not concerned about getting there, but I had real fears about not being able to get back. Not expecting to find any English so complicatedly far from Colombo, and knowing that I would be making this journey by myself, I worked actively to quell my anxieties while holding tight to my cell phone.

Defiantly striking heavenward against the surrounding skyline, Sri Pada has been claimed by every imaginable religious group. The huge foot print at the top of this 2243m peak seems to be the major cause. The name Adam’s Peak comes from the Judeo-Christian claim that the footprint was the first place Adam stepped after having been cast out of heaven. Buddhists, however, believe it to be the last earthly step of the Buddha, made during his ascension to Nirvana. Some believe its owner to be St. Thomas, or even the Hindu Lord Shiva. My favorite, however, comes from the name Samanalakande, or “butterfly mountain”, the place where butterflies come to die.

Despite the historical diversity, only Buddhism is readily apparent during the 7km assent. Travelers, including myself, frequently begin the hike around 2am in order to reach the top by sunrise. I had checked into a hotel in Dickoya after a 5 1/2 hour train ride from Colombo and was shocked to find myself freezing due to the altitude and the rainy weather. After an unexpected and embarrassingly large dinner, which I justified with my lack of food for the day and the forthcoming workout, I dozed fitfully until 1am, when my tri-shaw showed up to take me to the base of the mountain. An hour later, I found my self gazing up at a string of lights winding their way up into the sky, illuminating the path for pilgrims.

Near the beginning, monks greeted travelers as they slowly moved forward on their midnight assent. The path started off rather shallow, but quickly turned upwards, eventually forfeiting to a vertical progression of stairs. And while the way is now well established, elderly women, devoutly struggling against their failing joints, worked their way up the mountain, one step at a time, harkening back to the journeys of past generations:

“…others struggle upwards unaided, until, fainting by the way, they are considerately carried with all haste in their swooning condition to the summit and forced into an attitude of worship at the shrine to secure the full benefits of their pilgrimage before death should supervene; others never reach the top at all, but perish from cold and fatigue; and there have been many instances of pilgrims losing their lives by being blown over precipice or falling from giddiness induced by a thoughtless retrospect when surmounting especially dangerous cliffs.” — Vicotiran-Era Guidebook, 19th Century

Roughly 5200 stairs and a number of hours later, I found myself waiting for sunrise at the top. As the sun slowly burned into the morning clouds, an allusion to the storm from the evening before, I found myself remembering the young monk who had greeted me at the base.

“May Lord Buddha bless you and your journey,” he said in pristine English, his eyes glimmering purely in the artificial light. He couldn’t have been much older than me, but pressing a dot of paint on to my forehead and reaching for my hand, he slipped a plain threaded cord around my wrist. With a kind enthusiasm, he momentarily looked into my eyes, and then, while chanting a series of prayers, he repeatedly tied the cord to hold the blessings tight.

“Did you see the elephants?” Amitha asked me this morning. The power had gone out and we were taking a break out on the balcony, a futile attempt to avoid the heat.

I gave him a confused look from the hammock in which I was perched, never quite trusting that I had bridged the language barrier. He, however, had no problem reading my face. “In Kandy, at the Temple for the Tooth.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering that Kandy was famous for elephants. With one foot idly draped over the side, I rocked the hammock hoping for a breeze. “Huh. I didn’t see any elephants.”

They were shocked. Everyone jumped to explain where the elephant was and to show their surprise at missing such a massive animal, let alone a cornerstone of Kandy sight-seeing.

“Well, it wasn’t there.” I replied, after I was positive that I understood its standard location. I wasn’t sure at first. But really, how does one miss an elephant?

The whole notion of elephants here in Sri Lanka has been a bit unexpected. Most people are aware that there are elephant preserves. This week I will even be visiting an elephant orphanage. However, the blend of religion into animal deities sometimes results in unexpected outcomes. Take the cow, for example, a Hindi deity, commonly seen feasting on road side garbage heaps. Elephants, representatives of Ganesh, have a special place.

Approximately two weeks ago, during yet another break out on the balcony, we were talking about exotic foods. We were teasing Anjuna about his love of dogs, to which he indicated his preference that they be cooked. Sushi led to snake, and snake lead to beef, and the journey down the slippery slope began.

“So, do you ever eat elephant?” Kara asked. The boys were silent.

“Like when they are old?” Kara quickly added. The boys exchanged a silent yet meaningful glance. The silence took on a tense air.

“I mean, after they are done working,” Kara continued. I looked around for a shovel.

“No!” Anjuna cried out.

“Never, no.” Amitha said at the same time.

It was only at this point that I understood their former silence as horror.

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. However, I wasn’t about to let such a golden opportunity in the ongoing rivalry pass by. I looked at Kara and said, “Yeah, I think they used the cross for the barbeque.”

“The key to comedy,” my high school drama teacher, Robin Edwards, would say, “is repetition.” Ever since our faux pax, Kara and I have teased the boys endlessly about eating elephants. It is always done in an exaggeratedly false manner, in order to make light of our prior insensitivity. However, today when a game of cricket was proposed as a means to pass the time, Amitha said we would need something for goal posts.

“Elephants!” we cried.

I’m not sure if Robin was right. The boys didn’t think it was funny.

From the moment I touched down in Bangkok, I have been fascinated with brand identity here in Asia. I really just don’t get it. It started when I hopped in a cab for the Grand Palace and saw a billboard for Sony. It was simple a very large Sony logo. That was it.

Last weekend while in Kandy, just having recovered from my massage, I was walking down Dalada Vidiya when I heard a familiar sound that tickled at my memory of a distant past. I followed the music around the corner from the bookstore where I had just discovered LT, the Colombo expat guide to life, and the solution to the Sri Lankan plague of obesity, Atkins for Life. There source of the music was a Food City grocery store and a KFC (joined from the inside, of course). The music? The Backstreet Boys, of course. I couldn’t help but laugh, but was able to restrain myself from busting a move. Ice-cream cones, however, are 15 cents, so me and my dehydrated self waltzed through the front door.

Inside the front door was a small but over commercialized booth behind which a DJ was mixing my high-school memories. As I walked through the store trying to find some cold bottled water, I noticed sales people engaging customers, and passing out samples. I didn’t spend too much time looking, but did notice that their hats were all en-blazed with the logo “Prima!”

Water purchased, and Ice cream in hand, I sank into an air-conditioned seat, grateful for the temporary reprieve. It was only then that I glanced at the DJ’s booth again. The “Prima!” logo large over his head, I couldn’t avoid the shock at the text below: “Softer, creamier butter!”

All around the store were workers for the promotion passing out samples of butter in small paper cups. The Food City customers took the samples graciously, tasting them thoughtfully, and smiling with approval. As if a promotion for butter wasn’t bizarre enough, there wasn’t a cracker in sight.

Our hotel in Kandy was gorgeous. Twenty-five dollars got us a room with a view in an old colonial house with impossibly high ceilings and an impossibly stunning view of the hills surrounding this graceful town. There was one problem: mosquitoes. Kara had bargained for three mosquito coils, but later informed me that they don’t really work. “Well then,” I said, on our way back from a surprisingly good dinner of Chinese food, “let’s just try and kill them all.” And so Kara and I, tired from the day, did what any expats on vacation would do. We went on an good-old-fashioned mosquito hunt!

The next morning after a stunning two course breakfast with excellent coffee, fruit, eggs and toast, Kara took off to church, and I, wanting to keep a best-friend tradition alive, despite the country, went to get a massage. After all, how often are you in Sri Lanka and can get an Ayurvedic massage? I spent the rest of the day covered, literally head to toe, in oil.

Later that day, while on the train back to Colombo, Kara looked at me alarmed. “What is that?”, she said looking at the side of my head. Not certain if she should risk contact with the offending sight, I wiped some sweat from the part of my face apparently responsible for the duress, only to find my hand, well, green. “Oil,” the masseuse had said earlier, as he reached for the next in a succession of vials that were used, “Very good quality. Smell nice, no?” Apparently that was not the only indicator of its quality.

“You happy?” the masseuse had asked when my hour was over. The question seemed a strange invitation for an evaluation of the massage. I had said yes, and of course it was true. But add some humidity, dirt, and a lot of walking and sweating, and I think my answer had changed by mid-afternoon.

This past weekend during our escape to Kandy, we had the great luck of visitng the Peradeniya Botanic Gardens, Sri Lanka’s Nation Garden. You should really look at the gallery for the most phenomenal pictures. While it is hard in the tropics not to just accept the fact that you have no idea what you are looking at, botanically speaking, here at the gardens there were maps, plaques, and more, all to give us a hand. Ignoring the cannon ball tree, enormous fruit bats, Orchid House, and the irresistible hunt for the sausage tree, the highlight of the gardens is a ficus. As we came around the bend, Kara excitedly pointed it out. “Isn’t it amazing?” “I guess so,” I said, feeling a bit botanically gracious. I guess it was a pretty tree. “I mean its all one tree,” Kara continued. I was a bit confused, “Is that large for a ficus? Do you just find it aesthetically pleasing?” As we walked over to a cafe to get lunch, I could tell Kara was a bit deflated at my lack of enthusiasm. While she excused herself to the restroom, I casually thumbed through Lonely Planet to the section on the gardens. “The ficus, covering 6 hectares, stands as the nations botanical gem”, it said. Something was wrong. I looked back out at Kara’s tree and noticed that the green hill behind it was not a hill at all.

I made an executive decision. I needed an out. While logistically realizing that I had been working around the clock in a climate that is not very supportive of such ideas, I had not realized that emotional implications. I was getting very frustrated with Sri Lanka. When the internet dropped into total failure at the end of the week, I decided it was time to leave Seeduwa. I was in a Sri Lanka, it was time to do something!

I informed Kara that we were going to Kandy, and the next morning at 9AM we caught a bus for the Colombo train station. Dad would be proud, as should everyone else. This was my luggage. I slipped it in Kara’s backpack, tucked a book under my arm and we were off. An hour later we had boarded a 2nd class train for a long 3 hour mountain assent.

Kandy is in the central part of Sri Lanka, about 115km inland, and has a population of about 120,000. The geography is predominantly hilled, with endless houses tucked around ever ridge and in every valley. Supposedly locals refer to it as Maha Nuwara (Great City), but I never saw any evidence of it. Both the boys, however, seemed very excited at my choice for a weekend jaunt.

As we boarded the very crowded train, it was clear that a seat was not in our future. A little frustrated at the prospect of standing for 3 hours, neither Kara nor I had any clue as to our good fortune. Soon after the train started, a very kind man invited me to sit on the floor of the car next to him, as he sat, feet dangling out the train car door. He began pointing out the towns we were passing, and we quickly took to finding them on my map, tracing the route across the rice patties towards the mountainous center of the island. It was only a matter of time before he invited Kara, surely presuming she was my wife and that we were the strangest looking couple he had ever seen, to take his place and sit next to me. Feet dangling out of the train door, we would lean out with childlike glee, urging the train to faster speeds and greater heights.

Copyrights sort of cease to exist once you leave America. Well, perhaps their stability in the US isn’t that stable to begin with. At any rate, despite the slow internet connections, I have been downloading some of my favorite shows, as well as some of my least favorites.

TV is a strange and mythical beast in my mind. As many may know, my family didn’t have a TV in the house until I was seven or eight. However, even after an undersized screen appeared is the enormous cavity in the family room, intended for a big screen TV, it’s power cord typically was encased with in a strange box, preventing it’s use.

This lack of media, and God forbid, too much fresh air has resulted in a surprising social handicap of which my friends enjoy taking advantage. Comments such as “He drove around in a train?” and “Who is Gary Colman anyway?” are not as rare as one might hope.

What I did lack in TV, I made up with in video games. I remember one summer taking an ordinary kitchen knife and witling a hole in the TV’s power lock. The whole, just big enough to allow the electrical prongs out, gave me complete dominion over the TV, but with the desired anonymity. I think I pretended to be sick during a lot of family outings that summer.

Despite my parent’s best efforts, however, here I am, completely plugged in and watching TV. The Olympics in Torino started just days before I left the country, and I wasn’t able to see the opening ceremonies. So here is a thanks to that anonymous Canadian who recorded CBC’s coverage and posted it on the internet.

It turns out that there aren’t that many Americans in the Parade of Nations. Or, at least if there are, no one else besides us seems to care. It was interesting to here the light foreign banter between the two broadcasters, discussing their favorite aspects of Italian culture.

A recent family poll revealed that most of us would like to visit Italy in the near future. But with my mother’s recent trip in mind, I could help but chuckle at a conversation one claimed to have had with Pavarotti.
“Pavarotti,” the broadcaster said, or so I imagine, “what do you prefer, red wine or white?”
“I,…” he replied, giving ample time for dramatic flair, “am an Italian man! I only drink white wine when we are out of red!”

It seems I need to work on my palate.