Sri Lanka: "The Peanut of India"

Indian tourist visas can last for up to ten years - which is nice, but they do not allow for uninterrupted stay. Every Indian-tourist-visa-holder must leave the country every 180 days or face deportation.

Luckily, for us volunteers, this meant a well-earned vacation to Sri Lanka!

Sri Lanka (or at least the places we visited there) is more westernized than Kerala, so we were able to indulge momentarily in things that we haven't seen, tasted, smelled etc for months. Stepping off the plane and walking into the international terminal in Colombo was like walking into the US. We were floored. Literally. We stopped in the middle of the floor and just gaped at the big screen t.v.s and bottles of fancy perfumes that surrounded us. The rest of the trip we spent completely unfloored, traveling from one city to another, trying to get as much as we could out of our week in Sri Lanka. Here's my Top Ten List of Stuff We Did in Sri Lanka:

10) Sang karaoke (and were promised to make it to the finals, because they "needed some white skin")
9) Watched a few rounds of elephant polo

8) Didn't get stared at... as much...
7) Drank smoothies and ate sandwiches at Cafe du Monde
6) Never wore a churidar (which provoked one volunteer to note "I'm walking like myself again!")
5) Got a glimpse of a box containing a box containing a box containing (etc) Buddha's tooth.
4) Visited tsunami camps
3) Surfed
2) Watched the movie Snakes on a Plane
1) Got our passports stamped so that we could re-enter India for 6 more months!