Day 1 (Sunday)

**My new favorite thing:

June Coconut: an orange fruit with coconut water inside. A street vendor will chop one off his bushel, cut a small hole in the top and give you a straw. You drink the water and then give it back, he chops it in half and takes a small piece off the hard outer shell to use as a spoon. You then spoon out the soft coconut inside and eat it. There is a lot of coconut left, but too hard to get out with the spoon.**

My flight has landed and I make my way to immigration. As I am standing in line I get anxious. I am noticing a lot of people get turned away, being told to go to an office behind us. One couple vainly tries to explain that that office sent them to this line. I really do not want to get bounced back and forth like that. After going through without a hitch, I assume those people did not have activated visas.

I get my bags with some help from a nice gentleman standing next to me. He can tell both my bags are right next to each other because of their distinctive purple flower pattern which matches my carry-on. He shows me that his children taped a square of red construction paper to his bag (standard blue) to make it stand out.

I am met at the airport and from here I go to Galle (pronoucned Gaul) to stay with my country coordinator Michael for 1 week. This week is the culteral and language immersion program.

I arrive at 2:30 and am told to relax until dinner at 7:30. I start to unpack and I realize there has been a sunscreen *catastrophe.* One of my gallon containers' tops has broken off and there is sunscreen everywhere! I am literally taking handfulls of it from the bottom of my suitcase and feeding it back into the bottle. Thankfully this was not the suitcase with my clothing.

After cleaning everything I promptly fall asleep for 3 hours, waking up shortly before dinner. At dinner I meet Hariet and Michele, 2 volunteers already living here. They are working at the orphanage here in Galle--the human kind, not elephants. They are very nice, after dinner (very spicy) they invite me to walk with them to the nearby Dutch Fort. Inside we go to the Buddhist Temple and sit on a hill overlooking the ocean.

We are a novelty and Sri Lankans will come over and show off their minimal English for us.

"Hello," "I'm fine, thanks," and "what country are you from?" They may just stand near us, looking, talking among themselves, and laughing. The small children are the most excitable, they see us and immediately turn to us, waving and shouting "hello! hello!" or "goodbye!" When we wave back and say "hello" they have huge smiles on their faces.

Curfew is at 10:30, and we take a bus home to avoid walking too much in the dark. We don't feel unsafe, but it's a long walk and slower in the dark. We are each overcharged by 10 rupees on the bus, but we make it home before the door is locked.