Day 1 on the Island

So everything was going just fine, until I started hearing whispers in the jungle and saw some crazy black smoke and then the sky turned purple and we moved possibly in both space and time and…oh, wait. Wrong island. I am, however, going to start referring to everything that I do as “on the Island.” It's how I will survive if I can't find figure out how to watch LOST.

What with all this vacationing, I forgot that there was a goal at the end--Sri Lanka. I am here. I am writing this under my mosquito net on my bed at the guest house that I was taken to when I arrived at the airport. (Hopefully this will reach the internets sooner rather than later). I’ve only slept under a mosquito net a few times before, but it’s really difficult to tuck it in properly all around the bed, so it doesn’t just kind of lay on top of you instead of being pulled taut a few feet above you. If it just lies on top of you the little buggers (I like to call them dengoos) can just bite you through it. If I end up using one permanently, which I guess is what people do here, safety pins are definitely going to have to be involved. I do feel like quite the fairy princess, though.

I arrived on the island around 2 today, after an early morning flight from Delhi, through Chennai. On the second leg of my flight I got upgraded to business class because “economy was full,” or at least that’s what they told me. I'm not sure what that means, since I had a boarding pass from my first flight. Even though the flight was only about an hour and a half, it was pretty sweet, because I got a free cup of coffee in the fancy lounge before the flight, AND an extra cup of juice at the beginning of the flight. Oh, also some colonial and/or class guilt, watching everyone walk through business class to economy. However, political angst notwithstanding, I did get to watch a half an hour of the new Indiana Jones movie, aka the chase scene filmed on Yale’s campus. My favorite part was the huge anti-communist protest on Old Campus – “Better Dead than Red” etc. I wonder if they got a permit from Betty T for that one…

Upon arrival, I was met at the airport not only by the person who was there to pick me up, but also by huge posters welcoming PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who was here for like 2 days last weekend. There were alternating Palestinian and Sri Lankan flags along the road, and alternating pictures of Abbas and Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president. Ironically, this was also accompanied by many many soldiers, and, I think, increased checkpoints in Colombo. I need to go read more about their meeting and see what went down.

My afternoon consisted of a trek to find an ATM, since I turned dumb and didn’t get money at the airport (Why? I have no idea). Once I did that, I made another trek to the find the internet, ostensibly to e-mail my parents (Hi guys!) but deep down really to re-establish any kind of psychological connection to the world. I have e-mail, and therefore, friends! The first few days in an unfamiliar place are always kind of brutal. One of the senior professors and his wife are staying in this guest house as well, though, which meant that I had tea and chatted with them this evening instead of sitting in my room by myself trying to stave off the oh-my-god-why-did-I-think-showing-up-in-a-country-I’ve-never-been-to-was-a-good-idea panic. I mean, I did do a little bit of that after tea, but that was really only in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of a HUGE cockroach just chillin in my shower curtain. Now, I would like to not consider myself a super squeamish person, but let’s be real, cockroaches are just gross. But now I have my own can of Super Kill! roach killer, so there’s that. Panic mostly averted.

UPDATE: This morning I discovered how effective that stuff really is, because there were three more dead roaches in the bathroom. Gross. But less gross than if they were alive.