Sri Lanka: Travel back to the US

The first leg of my journey home was with my two Clearside coworkers. It was so good to have people to navigate through security and customs at the Colombo airport with. We were all exhausted, and everything at that airport is poorly labeled, so several times we found ourselves walking back and forth multiple times to find the right ticket counters and security lines. We finally made it through with plenty of time to spare. The first leg of the flight was about 5 hours, Colombo to Doha, and I can't really speak to it because I was asleep basically the whole time. I managed to stay awake long enough after boarding to ask the flight attendant to wake me up and bring me breakfast an hour before we landed in Doha, and then immediately fell into a deep sleep. I was awaken for my breakfast and watched our morning approach into Doha through the window.

Landing at Doha, this time with coworkers and more familiar with the airport, was far less stressful than on the trip over. We went into the business lounge for about an hour, and then parted ways for the next leg of the flight. For some reason, my flight was booked through Dallas and there's through Chicago. Boarding this flight, I went through a very thorough security screening. I had to unpack almost my entire bag. Thankfully, I checked all my training supplies for the return trip so I didn't have anything unusual with me to try and explain. This flight was officially the longest flight I have ever taken - it was 16 hours total. The flight was also not what I expected. According to the map, we flew very far north, over Greenland and Canada, and then south across the US to Dallas. I decided not even to try and strategize about jet lag at this point. My new plan: sleep when I was tired and eat when I was hungry. I slept the first several hours of the flight, woke up for a meal (absolutely no idea what meal it should be called) and watched several movies. Landing in Dallas required going through customs, getting all my baggage, rechecking all my baggage, and going back through normal TSA security. I looked and felt horrible - which I know to be true because every kind Texan TSA worked asked “are you ok, ma’am”? I took their questioning to mean they cared and I looked horrible, so I went to the American Airlines lounge and took a shower to try and clean up a little. And I have to say - this was one of the best showers I’ve ever taken in my life. I grabbed a snack and a drink or two at the bar afterwards, and then got myself to the gate for the very last leg of the trip. Nothing noteworthy happened on this leg, other than the fact that it was the beginning of my transition back into normal domestic flying. Back to normal routine for me.

I arrived in Atlanta dazed and so grateful to be home. Parker picked me up with flowers (and my real engagement ring!) and did basically everything to get me home. He found my luggage, carried my luggage, loaded my luggage into the car, and unloaded my luggage into my room. I think I’ll keep him around :)

What a trip! I am so grateful for this crazy adventure. So much learning, so many firsts, and so much unexpected. I must say, carrying my US passport closely for the past week has given me an unexpected and renewed sense of patriotism. I think we can all come up with many reasons why our country isn’t perfect, but I believe its the best out there. Being in a country where everyone looks and acts the same made me appreciate the diversity that is so common and normal here in the states. I am use to seeing people of all colors and nationalities and religions around - that is comfortable to me. Being in a place where I stood out so blatantly for what I looked like made me appreciate all the different cultures we get to experience right in our back yard here in the states.

Sri Lanka: Meeting Day 2

Today was the day that mattered most, to me anyway, from a meeting standpoint. I woke up early to finish prepping for training, and then went down to breakfast. I met with a new friend from the night before that helped navigate the breakfast buffet. I tried hoppers, which are like thin rice crepes stuffed with a seasoned potatoes and cauliflower filling, and some seasoned lentil donuts, and various chutneys. Everything was delicious! I asked my friend what distinguishes breakfast from other meals in Sri Lanka, and he said, "maybe some things are less spicy". So basically more of lunch and dinner. He suggested I try a dish that I could not pronounce because he wanted my thoughts on. I hesitantly agreed, and upon trying it he told me it was cream of wheat, seasoned Sri Lanka style. Even bland breakfast items are given lots of flavor here!

The meetings and trainings went very well! It was a fascinating experience to work with physicians from a different place. Some habits are very similar the US, while others are very, very different. There was a bit of unease around the pig product, but mores from the wait staff than anyone else. Lots of people took pictures - I don't think they could believe that they were seeing what they were in such a nice event space. 

After training and cleaned up and headed to dinner. When I arrived, I knew right away this night was going to different than the one before. On the stage, there was a dj table and a dance floor set up. Oh boy. Sure enough, about 15 minutes after dinner was suppose to start, on came the loud and colorful Indian dance music. People immediately went up to the dance floor - doctors and assistants alike. It was amazing to see how EVERYONE loved to dance. My friend Ellie and I got dragged on pretty quickly; it seemed rude to say no. And as awkward as I felt, I have to say it was so much fun. Everyone was laughing and having the best time. The dancing lasted completely through dinner, so people would trickle off the dance floor, eat, and then go right back to dancing. Someone must have told the  dj that there were three Americans on the dance floor, because at one point he decides to place a very slow rendition of backstreet boys for us. Perhaps my favorite moment, however, was when almost all the doctors and every Clearside person was on the dance floor dancing together. Never in America would you see that happen. Cultures really started to meld when they played "gangam style", the Korean pop song. I stepped back and laughed to myself as I realized I, an American, was in Sri Lanka, dancing with 40 Indians to a Korean pop song. What a global world we live in. How awesome. As the crowd started to wain on the dance floor, the DJ switched over to more American tunes. My friend Ellie and I felt obligated to dance for those, but none of our Indian friends joined - but they all watched, that's for sure. We knew they were watching us, but we didn't know how closely until we left the dance floor and they all clapped for us. So yes, I was dancing entertainment for our Indian physicians at a nice Sri Lankan dinner. Things I never thought I'd do....

We had to leave dinner early (at 11pm) in order to get our ride to the airport for our 3:30am flight. We ended up in an elevator packed with our meeting attendees, so of course I took advantage of those perfect opportunity for a huge group selfie. And they LOVED it. It's an awesome picture of an unusual and incredibly fun last dinner in Sri Lanka.

We were incredibly fortunate that our ride to the airport was scheduled when it was. We ended up driving through the city right in the middle of all the lighted festivities for the Buddhist festival. Most building had Christmas lights (probably the wrong way to describe them...) covering them, and there were all types of lanterns hung and lighted displayed set out on the sidewalks. Truly beautiful. 

Sri Lanka: Meeting Day 1

Today I did a lot of things I never thought I would do. There were many moments that I found myself pausing, taking a step back, and thinking "is this my life?" and just chuckling to myself. 

The day began early; I woke up before my alarm and made a few calls home. I got dressed and went to the buffet breakfast and was very overwhelmed. There were many curry dishes, plenty of things I had no clue about, and a few "American" dishes that looked like nothing I've ever seen before. There were many delicious pastries and fruits, so I settled for those. I was even able to FaceTime with Katie over breakfast!

After breakfast began the start of our meeting. We had about 40 people present, and most of the preparatory work had been outsourced to an Indian company so we had very little logistical things to do. One thing this company did very well was make formal banners and signs for the meeting - and it was so cool to see Clearside in Colombo hanging everywhere. We took our seats and met many of our Indian counterparts, and then settled into the meeting. All the information covered is identical to what is shared in US meetings, but comparing the questions and general behaviors between attendees in the two countries was very interesting. In this meeting, everyone was much more formal, and there questions were much more thorough. I was incredibly impressed with how engaged everyone was. 

My role in these meetings is to teach how to the medical procedure, and to do so requires some unique supplies, namely porcine (pig) eye tissue. In the US this is very easy to come by. We have an arrangement with several butchers to remove the eyes when they are butchering pigs for food. In Sri Lanka...not so easy. We had been working to source pig eyes for weeks, and our Indian meeting partners eventually took over and said they would figure out how to acquire them. This gave me great peace of mine. When I arrived and began working with the individuals that had done the actual sourcing, I realized what an extraordinary thing we had asked for. Apparently directors, ministers of heath, and other notable individuals had to give their approval for us to use the eye tissues. In Sri Lanka, both the Muslims and the Buddhists view pigs as unclean and want nothing to do with them. Requesting to bring in so much unusual tissue was quite the request. But one that, after visiting over 30 butchers, they were able to accommodate. The specimens were delivered in this morning, completely frozen, via tuk tuk, a three-wheeled motorcycle taxi type car. As they were unloaded, everyone wanted to get selfies with me to commemorate their strange arrival. I must say, it was quite strange. I have never had biological specimens delivered in such a unique way, and I've certainly never been so blatantly religiously offensive in doing so. 

Finding a place to hold the specimens was another challenge because the hotel didn't want them just anywhere, as you can imagine. We agreed that everything would be stored in coolers in my room, and that I would leave the "Do not Disturb" sign on to prevent any chaos should housekeeping open the coolers. I can only imagine trying to explain that one...

During lunch I had a chance to chat with some of the attendees, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to hear what it was like to work in their offices. Because all doctors they work for are specialists for uncommon diseases, it isn't rare for their patients to travel 1000km for a visit. To me, that sound absolutely crazy. 

Meetings concluded by early afternoon, which gave me the rest of the day to work on defrosting the pig eyes. In my hotel room. What a strange thing to have to do. I did have a bit of time to walk along the ocean across from my hotel. No beach, per say, but strong waves that beat against a stone wall. There were many street food vendors selling food - mostly dried shrimp looking patties and breads. The weather was extraordinarily hot. I'm not sure on the exact temperature, but it must have been at least in the 90s and as close to 100% humidity as you can get without raining. I was with a coworker for this walk, also another woman with blonde hair, and we certainly stood out walking around both because of our skin color and our height. The city was preparing for a large Buddhist festival, so lanterns and flags and lights were being hung everywhere. As we walked, one if the many stray dogs that were around the area befriended us and walked with us a majority of the way back to the hotel. He didn't touch us, just stayed about a meter or so away the entire walk back. 

I prepped for dinner, which involved trying to tame my incredibly frizzy hair and putting back on my blazer, even though it was far to hot and humid to be wearing it. Dinner was at the top floor of the hotel overlooking the ocean - a really beautiful view. Even though we were facing the correct direction to see the sunset over the water, there were far too many clouds to see anything. As we entered the dinner ballroom we were handed delicious chilled mango juice in champagne flutes, and I mingled with some of the meeting attendees. Dinner was suppose to start at 7:30pm, and about 7:45 we were called to our seats, as expected. But, unbeknown to us, we had an hour and half show of Sri Lankan culture and music, including traditional dance and drumming. It was neat to see, and went on for a very, very long time. At one point there was a ritual exorcism dance, with two men dancing around the room wearing large  dragon face masks. I am hoping this did some good to "cleanse" my unclean, pig-cursed room. Once dinner was finally served, it was delicious, even though I couldn't tell you what I ate.  Lots of versions of curry and rice, though, as is the theme here. We chatted over dinner about Indian culture. The people at my table were mostly new college graduates, some living at home and some not. The one thing we had in common was American television: we talked about Game of Thrones, PS I Love You, and the table favorite: Gilmore girls. This particular show came up when I was asking what they perceived America to be like. None of them had ever been to the states, so they said they imagined it was like the Hollywood movies they watched (oh no....). I told them that where many people lived was no where like New York or LA or the other big popular American cities. This is when one man chimed in and said "oh I know about small town America, I've seen every episode of Gilmore Girls". So there you have it. 

Dinner wrapped up close to 11pm, and I retired back to my room to finish processing the pig eyes for the following day. It took longer than expected, and I finally made it to bed close to 1:30am. As soon as I had fallen asleep, I heard a knock on my door. I groggily got up to answer it, and it turned out to be room service dropping of some rice and curry to me. I insisted that this couldn't be meant for me, but was kindly told that there had been no mistake, this was for my room. I didn't put up any fight, instead I took the tray and set it down and went back to bed. Even my (unrequested) midnight snacks are curry here!

Sri Lanka: Driving and exploring

Woke up early this morning and I did some work, got dressed for our day of exploring, and met up with Ellie in the lobby. Our driver/tour guide arrived exactly like he said he would, and we introduced ourselves and were off by 7. Our first stop was the elephant orphanage, about a three hour drive because of all the traffic related to the mud slides. Driving around here is nuts. There are always, everywhere, tuk tuks, little tri-wheel covered taxis, and I cannot believe we didn't hit at least five during our trip today. Lots and lots of stop and go on the roads. And in general - everything is dirty and partially constructed. It's rainy season here, and mud is just everywhere. Also I have noticed a lot of wedding shops, but I might just be more sensitive to those things as of late...

Driving up to the elephant orphanage took us into the beautiful hill country; we passed rubber trees, banana trees, pineapple fields, and even some wild monkeys. Definitely not in Georgia anymore. 

The elephants were awesome! Definitely my favorite part of the day. The oldest elephants at the orphanage are treated with the most respect; we saw them first and got to feed them from a little raised hut structure. So so cool. They would stuck their trunks anywhere and everywhere and both Ellie and I got elephant dirt all over our shirts from our encounters. We then got to see elephants in several other holding areas. My favorite was a young two year old in a pen that was trying as hard as he could to reach with his trunk and pick up grass clippings from a weedwacker. He would get down on this front knees, stick his butt in the air, and stretch as far as he could to get the grass. In the pin next to him was a little older elephant that was munching on a tree trunk. To eat the meat from the truck, he would hold it with one foot and kick it, hard, with the other foot. Then he would rip out the loosened chunks with his trunk and eat away. At one point I stepped a little closer to get a video of the interaction, and he turned toward me and threw some bark my direction. Rude. Don't worry, I still got the video.

Our next stop was to be the city of Kandy, an older city and former Capitol of Sri Lanka. And also, most famously, it is home if the Temple of the Tooth. An actual tooth from an actual Buddha is housed here. What I learned from visiting this site is that I don't know much at all about Buddhism. We had to take our shoes off to enter the temple, which was a pretty busy place because Buddhas birthday is this weekend. Lots of colorful flags and flowers hanging everywhere. Apparently the tooth only gets displayed once every five years on this weekend, and people travel from all over to see it. It was strange to see such blatant idolatry in action. 

From the temple we walked the streets of Kandy. It was interesting to see the influence of the British architecture all around the city. A lot of old, well-built stone structures, a nice contrast from the more shotty construction we saw on the drive and in Colombo. We walked less than a mile total, and that was plenty for me. Passing the food stands was almost too much. The produce ones were fine, but the curry smell was overwhelming at times. And then there were the dried fish shops. Basically anything that you could catch in fresh or salt water was dried and then placed in big sacks and packed into a tiny open-air store front. Oh the smell. Oh the smell. It could have knocked me over. I have always considered myself very open minded about trying new things, but I found my limit. I'm just not interested in dried and oh so aromatic fish, thank you.

We went to lunch at a "normal and hygienic" place, as our guide described it. A buffet with lots of curry and fish and produce. I had to stay away from the fish based on my recent encounters....

We made a slight change of plans after lunch and decided to cut out the tea field tour and head back to Colombo. It was taking longer than planned to get anywhere because of all the mudslide traffic, and all the stop and go had made Ellie pretty car sick. 

And now four and a half hours later, we are still in the car trying to get back to the hotel. I miss my traffic on 400. Such clean, orderly, honking-free traffic. My plan tonight is to maybe eat some food from the hotel and to definitely go to bed early. Not going to lie - I've slept a lot in the car since lunch. I hope I haven't messed up my days and nights, we'll see. 

So glad I got to see the countryside today, what an experience. Asia traveling is different than I anticipated: messier, more colorful, and far fewer similarities with our world. Leaves me with lots of grateful feelings for our country and our community.

Sri Lanka! Traveling to it...

Part 1: The Flights

Lets start at the beginning. The Uber driver to the Atlanta airport was awesome. He was from Bangladesh, and when I told him where I was going, he was so excited. His words: "All of those Asia countries are the same, welcome to my neighborhood!" I left my apartment a little before 4am EDT.

Made it to the gate in Atlanta an hour and a half after I got to the airport.  Security was the worst I've ever seen. American Airlines sucks, by the way. I am definitely a Delta snob. After some confusion they were able to check my bags all the way to Colombo, so there's probably a good chance I'll have clothes when I get there. Probably. 

The ramp is currently closed because of weather. Atlanta is already weeping about my absence. Pilot told us not to be scared of lightening.

Update you on the flip side. 

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Survived the longest flight (PHL to DOH)! I sat next a lady going to Kuala Lumpur; she was kind and showed me the ropes about business class. I went all out - changed into the PJs, had them make my seat into a bed, and ate way too much off of the menu. I had a couple drinks to help me fall asleep, but I'm not actually sure how much sleep I got. Watched some great movies. The whole experience felt like being in a hospital: laying around and eating meals in bed, just with the added perk of not being ill! One small problem: my fingers have swelled and now there is no way this ring is coming off. I am going to have get lotion and dental floss and really work on it. 

Approaching Doha was awesome. Saw a great sun rise and then some impressive, though smoggy, skyline views on the approach. Also some beautiful mosque looking buildings. And lots of lots of tankers. The airport is beautiful, also. Oil money is where it's at. 

Going through security once we landed in Doha was pretty unnerving. I was nervous about my bag getting questioned and having difficulty explaining about all the training supplies. Fortunately I made it through no problem. Wondered around the airport briefly, and then went back to the oasis that is the business class lounge. Currently drinking coffee and eating fruit I can't really identify. I will certainly be well fed through the duration of this trip, that's for sure. 

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In Sri Lanka! Flight from Doha was not as nice, older aircraft so smaller business class. Listen to what a snob I've become. I was the only white person at the terminal, but fortunately not the only woman without my head covered. I had a scarf in case it seemed appropriate to wear one, but I decided not to. I am a modern woman, what can I say?

Boarding the plane involved taking a bus into the tarmac, and then lugging my pelican case (which I very quickly grew to despise) up two flights of stairs to board the plane. While it was approximately 104 F. Needless to say, by the time I got to my seat I was hot and nauseous and overall not feeling great. Thankfully business class wasn't even half full and I had no one in the pod next to me. The stewardess kept me on a steady supply of ginger ale which helped a little. They brought out a delicious hummus plate that was good to eat, too. 

Approaching Colombo was entirely different than Doha, for obvious desert versus tropics reasons. I could see a lot of flooding on roads from all the monsoons they've had recently. Deplaning involved trying to figure out how to go through immigration and customs, and after standing in a line where I was once again the only white person (and also the tallest by a couple of inches) had zero problems getting my passport stamped. All my baggage arrived no problems, and I didn't get pulled aside at customs. There was a small hiccup in finding my driver, who was suppose to be waiting with a sign with my name, but I found another driver picking up for my hotel and he helped me locate the right person. 

And now, let me just say that driving here is nuts. It took an hour for us to leave the airport. It seems like it may be worse than Kenya. I'm typing this in the car while we are driving to the hotel to try and distract myself. It's terrifying to see how close we are coming to other cars and Id rather just not see anything. My driver is also a tour guide during busy tourist season (which is not right now because of the rain, unfortunately) so he sharing random facts on occasion. For a lot of them he says "I would tell you name but it is too long for you to remember so just pretend". Fair. He told me about the different cars in Sri Lanka - lots of Toyotas and Tatas. When I told him I drove a Camry he thought that was the best thing ever. Good to know that all the way around the world I can get some cool points for my good ole car. 

Arrived at the hotel at 8pm Sri Lanka time (which I believe means I was traveling for about 32 hours...but dont quote me on that time math). Met up with Ellie and had the hotel buffet for dinner. Not sure how it holds up to other Sri Lankan fare, but initial observations are that everything is pretty heavy on cinnamon. It's interesting. 

And now....I am going to bed. We've got a tour that leaves tomorrow at 7 am. Time to see the elephants! And hopefully not get taken by mudslides. Well see.