Travelling to our new home

I met four other volunteers at the gate, in the queue for getting on the plane, and they were sitting only the row in front of us on the plane! They were all lovely people, and I'm glad because we had to spent 8 hours in Chennai Airport, India, waiting for our flight to Colombo. It was my first slight sight of the poverty to come, as the seats we slept on were wet and moldy and their were wires hanging out the walls. When I slept I tryed to cover my whole body, as my DEET spray to repel mosquitos was in my suitcase, which i did not have access too. However, my hand fell out of my sleeping bag for five minutes and got my first 3 mosquito bites!

The security were very shocked that we had no Indian visa, even though we were only in transit. They insisted on taking our passports and didn't return them for four hours! They said everything was now fine and so we happily fell asleep again, setting an alarm and getting up just in time for boarding, but needless did we know, they hadn't sorted our passports out, and sent us away. We waited and asked again, but were still sent away. We waited and waited and waited and just as they were close to closing boarding we managed to get in. Ironically we could have sorted out the problem, because all they needed was 'transit' to be written on our tickets!

I feel asleep on the plane and woke 10 minutes before landing, with a full tray of food on the table in front of me. I ended up trying to eat sloppy rice pudding as the plane landed.

When we arrived, we thought that this whole thing may be a big hoax and we would be stranded in the middle of nowhere. But, a lovely man, named Buddahika, met us and took us for our first taste of Sri lankan tea. I pretended to love it, but  really I preferred English tea. However, as I have been drinking the tea for a week now I am beggining to love it. The trick is to put a lot (3 tbsps) of sugar in it.

We met another lovely volunteer at the airport and then all 7 of us, a driver and all our luggage had to squish into a van. We just about managed it, apart from one chair falling off its hinges! We were maazed by everything we saw on the way to our new homes, and we just stared out the windows in awe. We stared like we were on safari, watching everything going on outside, and the Sri Lankans stared back at us like we were zoo animals. Some how I managed to get bitten by mosquitos another 4 times, underneath my trousers!

When I arrived at my 'homestay' I felt immediately welcome. The family were great and laughed at nearly everything we said. They found our culture very intruiging, as do I to theres. They laughed especially when I was fascinated by a passing family of monkeys, moving along the telephone wires right by their house. They call the monkeys pests here, becasue they eat all their fruit!