Learning to Live Peace: Our First Week in Tropical Paradise!

We were treated to a spectacularly easy and comfortable arrival both into the country and to our home site! A professor that we will be working with while here picked us up at the airport at an unreasonable 1:00 am and transported us to a comfortable bed and breakfast. The next day, he brought us around Colombo, helping us get set up for our time in Sri Lanka, then drove us the 4-hour journey to our now home in a comfortable air conditioned van. We had the royal treatment and are so thankful for the easy transition.

The field station (our home) is very nicely positioned tucked onto a hillside overlooking the rainforest

Our home (the field station) is very comfortable with everything we need. It is tucked up on a hill at the end of an intermittently paved dirt road (also known as Pitakele village) amongst the ferns and orchids.

40 minute walk to the tiny town of Kuduwa

We have a fantastic cook/caretaker who looks after the house and makes us three Sri Lankan meals everyday, usually including at least rice, vegetables, coconut and curry.

We also had the good fortune of sharing the house for a few days with a Sri Lankan researcher who toured us around the Sinharaja Forest Reserve and helped us understand the culture a little better. He speaks English and also helped us get started learning Sinhala (the local language). I’ve now memorized the alphabet and am reading like a first grader (although I still don’t know what the words mean). I’m probably up to about 50 words so far.

Logan, Laura, Champika, & Blair

Really though, the natural world is the main attraction here...

While swinging in a hammock on our sizeable veranda, I daily witness many

tropical birds, monkeys, wild chickens, lizards, and of course a gorgeous panorama of tropical trees and plants. While we have had surprisingly less rain than we expected, this is also an excellent place to enjoy the sound and smell of clean water falling from the sky.

The weather and environment is much more comfortable than we expected as well. While it is of course humid, it seems less humid than DC in the summer... and the temperature mostly stays comfortable. The evening temperature is perfect for sleeping and the mosquitos are shockingly absent... In many tropical places, we would sweat without moving around or doing anything. Here, we are lucky that this is not the case; we get sweaty only when we are active!

Although we have a shower at home, we usually choose to indulge in a cool swim at the head of our exceptionally clean river to rinse away the day’s heat. When the current is right, we stand under the waterfall for a massage as well!

Our private swimming area complete with sandy beach and waterfalls!

Our lush panoramic view from the veranda, where birds and monkeys abound

This week, Logan and Blair’s former professor, who is a leader of the Sri Lankan organization hosting us, will arrive to spend a week better acquainting us with what our next 6-8 months will look like and the projects we’ll be working on.