Happy Halloween!

For some reason I can't explain, I am a huge proponent of homemade Halloween costumes.  Well, that's not quite accurate: I can explain it, but my explanation doesn't really translate into any innate skill in costume construction, yet I still insist on doing it.  You see, I really like Halloween.  I like the dressing up, of course, but I really like the food and the parties and, most of all, the kids in their costumes, especially their homemade costumes.  So for almost all of my boys' lives, I have made their Halloween costumes.  Which sounds very impressive, until you realize that I don't actually sew all that much, I'm not really all that creative when it comes right down to it, and my craft ideas always, ALWAYS exceed my craft talents, which are limited at best.  Recently, however, I discovered the art of the hoodie costume, the costume made out of a glorified, gussied-up sweatsuit, and I have taken that idea and run with it, for several years, with relative success, I think, although you can be the judge.  And even before that, I have always been a big fan of simple costumes made out regular clothes.  See some examples from the past and pictures of this year's costumes:

J's first Halloween!

J's second Halloween (I had a super-hero mask too but it melted).

Not Halloween but definitely our kind of costume.

E's first Halloween (I forget what the husband
was...a tomato? a strawberry??).

My little mummy (there are sweat pants under there).

E was something this year but stripped off all the costume
parts before we even started trick-or-treating!

Shhhhh!

Again, it's a t-shirt.

Dragon hoodie and E "who-ing my who!"

Bat and whale shark, my best work so far!

Here we are trick-or-treating last year.  Notice the
reappearance of the dragon costume on our neighbor
friend.  I love sharing!

Which brings us to this year.  My poor kids: I always make them tell me their ideas far in advance, and I get final approval (based on what I deem possible given my minimal talents).  This year I made them both tell me what they wanted to be for Halloween over the summer, so I could assemble the pieces and gather materials while we were in the States if necessary.  Luckily, they had fairly easy wishes this time around.  I was able to find a t-shirt hoodie for J (it is far too hot for sweatsuits around here) since he wanted to be a dinosaur (very similar to the dragon) with red and green spikes.  Why these colors?  Who knows??  E wanted to be a robot...then a robot dinosaur, which seemed a bit more challenging...but when we finally got down to making the costume and looking at pics on Pinterest, he went back to a plain old robot.  Hooray!  Cardboard boxes and the recyclables I have been collecting since we came here, and gray paint I knew just where to find, miraculously.

Of course, trick-or-treating this year was complicated.  First, they don't really celebrate Halloween here, it being A, a holiday with Pagan and Christian origins, and B, all about magic and witches and ghosts, which are taboo in these parts.  Second, even though the Westerners in our compound did organize trick-or-treating and our friend graciously invited us to her compound as well, we couldn't take part because Halloween falls on a Friday this year...which is the Sabbath for us around here.  Luckily, we did have a Halloween party carnival at church on Thursday, so the boys were able to dress up, show off, and amass some candy via fun games and booths.  I actually liked not having to make a costume that the boys had to take on and off by themselves multiple times like they have had to do in the past, what with school and church parties and Halloween itself.  For our private celebration tonight, we closed our doors and turned off the lights so no one would knock on our door and instead stayed in and watched Halloween-themed cartoons and had a candle-lit apple slice dipping bar: apple slices on sticks dipped in chocolate, white chocolate, and/or caramel sauce and then dipped again in any or all of the following: graham cracker crumbs, a cinnamon sugar mixture, grated coconut, chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, toffee bits (crushed Werther's candies), or Halloween sprinkles (I brought those with me).  We also had our favorite yummy pumpkin soup to round out a fun and festive evening.

Robot and dinosaur.  Our robot lives by the code
that more is more in buttons!

There was face painting!

You can barely see his spikes here....

Yep, those were our costumes, very low maintenance!

Back in the saddle again...sort of

I have gone back on the job market, which isn't nearly as dramatic as it sounds here, where it basically means polishing up (read: updating since the last time I used it, over 6 years ago) my CV and trying to find places to submit it.  The pickings for me here are a bit thin, though not overly so. So far, I have actually applied and been interviewed for one job and the experience was...odd.

The job was a professional writing specialist position at the campus writing lab at a local Qatari university.  A woman at church actually has this same position and asked if anyone were interested, so I submitted my resume through her.  It was very nice of her to let us know about the job, so I am grateful she thought to do that.  Anywho, after a while I was contacted for an interview, at which point I began to do a bit more digging into the details of the lab and the position itself and what I saw was totally familiar to me, the same kind of work I had done before at the University of Delaware and The Citadel writing centers.  Actually, the job was virtually identical to the position at The Citadel, so I felt completely confident going into the interview.  I knew what they were going to ask me, I knew how the job worked, I knew more about how things were run at their particular institution after my digging, and I was ready to go.  And I was right: the interview went well, I thought, and it was fun to be talking to adults who cared about writing and student instruction like I do.

On the other hand, I might have been a little too confident or maybe perhaps lacking at least a small but healthy dose of nerves.  They asked me early on if I had any questions for them about how the lab worked and I asked right away if the reasons they only had half hour appointments with students were pedagogical or practical since in my experience, longer appointments were often more productive than shorter ones.  I may have overstepped my bounds a bit by coming out so forcefully in favor of a different practice, but I honestly couldn't imagine doing any real instruction or writing coaching on anything longer than a page in such a short amount of time.  All in all, though, I felt like I answered the questions well and I certainly felt like they were pleased with my performance.

However, when we started to talk about the nuts and bolts of the schedule, I could see some problems for me right away.  One, the hours were set, 7:30am - 2:30pm, which are actually great hours, except that the kids get home from school at 2:30pm and it would take me at least 45 minutes to drive home, so I would need someone to watch them for an hour every day and two hours on Wednesdays when they get out earlier.  Also, the holidays on this university's academic calendar did not line up with the kids' school holidays at all.  In the spring, in fact, there was exactly zero overlap: their winter break ended just as the university's January break began and then when that break was over, the kids' February break began and so on and so forth.  We really don't want to have to get a nanny for the boys just so I can work, so this schedule difference really made the position untenable for me, which I had decided by the time I got home from the interview.

Turns out, I wasn't offered the job, so it was good I had decided I didn't want it in advance!  But it was still nice to be considered and good practice for me to help me get back in the employment game.  I've got a few other possibilities out there, so we will see what happens.  The husband and I have discussed this, and we are in the same enviable position as before: we don't need for me to work.  I don't have to work for us to make ends meet, and I am very aware of how much a privilege that is.  If we were back in the States, I would be looking for my dream job (whatever that happens to be now) and not settling for anything less.  Here, that means I may not find something I want to do or I may end up doing a lot of volunteer work instead or I may get a new hobby or I may just spend all my time planning fabulous family trips or I may write on this blog a whole lot more...who knows??  My prospects are unknown, perhaps unknowable.  I'm not super comfortable with not knowing what is going to happen, but, if nothing else, moving here has, by necessity and not without a lot of protest, made me much more comfortable with new and ever-changing levels of uncertainty!

A day in the life--the not so usual

Now let me tell about another day from earlier this month: once again, I woke up at 4:30am (early mornings happen no matter what here, it seems), but this time it was my alarm that woke me.  I got up reluctantly, showered, and got dressed in my most comfortable church clothes: a jersey pencil skirt, a stretchy, very soft shirt, a knit blazer, and my most comfortable heeled sandals.  I met my ride at 5:15am and we headed to the airport.

Why? Well, we were on the way to Abu Dhabi for some stake auxiliary training for church.  Because that's how we roll here, we take flights for our training!  WHAT?  Really?  So bizarre!

Recently, I was called to work with the teenage girls at church, really my first time in this organization and with this gender, though of course I have done lots with teenagers in Sunday School and seminary classes in the past.  So I was heading to Abu Dhabi to get some training specific to this group.  I had already checked in at home and had my mobile boarding pass on my phone, so I thought we would breeze right through the airport, though when I got to security before passport control, they took my mobile phone, walked halfway across the airport to a scanner bolted to a desk, stuck my phone on the scanner...and then printed out a paper boarding pass and gave it to me.  Because of COURSE they did!  Note to self: not as technologically advanced as one might hope at the new airport!  And, as usual, the line through passport control was very slow, for no apparent reason. When you leave or return to Doha, the passport controllers are notoriously slow and not very friendly and no one really understands why (though the last time I went through with J who was about to have an accident in the line, the man did hurry right up for me and let the two of us through to find a bathroom, so that was nice!).

After that, we headed to our gate to sit and wait for quite a while, and then we took a quick shuttle bus to our actual airplane.  Our flight was a quick one, just one hour, so we were up and down before we knew it.  I read a great psychology magazine and woofed down a breakfast sandwich while we were in the air, not finishing either.  Once we touched down in Abu Dhabi, we headed to passport control again.  This time the controllers were very friendly, but for some reason I ended up taking the longest of everyone in our group.  Why?  I have no idea, and you really don't want to ask too many questions while your passport is being inspected!  In the end, I was finally put through and I hurried to meet up with the rest of our friends to find our rides.

We were met by some lovely people from the local congregation who drove us to the stake meeting house, which we were all happy to see.  For many of us, this was our first trip to the Abu Dhabi meeting house, the only purpose-built Mormon meeting house in the entire Middle East.  On the outside, it looked like any one of a gazillion sand-colored buildings all over the region, but inside were all the same familiar fabrics and furnishings, accented with local artwork and window treatments.  It was a bit surreal, actually, after almost a year meeting in a converted villa.

After our two and a half hour training, we headed to a local member's villa to eat and rest before our flights.  This villa was spectacular, HUGE and furnished with all sorts of unique wooden pieces the couple had collected from local craftsmen.  They had a huge spread for us, sandwich fixings (including two kinds of ham since they knew we were coming from Qatar), fruits and veggies, crockpot kielbasa (more pork!), and loads of desserts.  It was so nice of them to host us and give us a place to stay besides the airport and we so appreciated their hospitality.  They also drove us back to the airport in the evening for our 7pm flight.  Once again, I was slow through passport control in the UAE, but our flight was just as quick, although this time we were riding with a Qatari and his hooded falcon...of course!  Sadly, passport control into Doha actually took longer than our whole flight, which was disappointing, though uncharacteristically the passport checker said both "Welcome back" and "welcome home" to me, which gave me all sorts of warm feelings.  And I really did feel glad I was home after my very long day in another country.

Look at my rock-and-roll lifestyle!  I am such a jet-setter...NOT!

A day in the life--the usual

How about a glimpse into a typical day of mine?  I'll pick one at random, just so you can get a sense of my life now, if you're interested.  I'll warn you in advance, it's pretty mundane, but I think the details tell a lot about how things work here in Qatar.

The other day, the boys woke up at 4:30am, much too early, but they were happy to go downstairs and play legos and eat granola bars until I had my shower at 5:15.  After that, I got them more breakfast and found all the pieces of their uniforms, got them dressed and brushed and sorted and walked them to the bus.  I stayed chatting with them until the bus left a few minutes later, at 6:25am so they can get to school by 7am.

After they went to school, I saw the husband off to work (he leaves for his shuttle to work at 6:35am), did a little blogging, and got ready to go myself.  My first errand was to the school.  I needed to pay the lunch bills for the boys, so I had to visit the accountant, a woman who makes me absolutely crazy with her incompetence.  While there, she told me the hospital still hasn't paid the boys' tuition for last term.  There is nothing I can do about that, really, so I don't know why she told me.  Tuition is the employer's responsibility here, so they really need to work it out themselves.

Next, I went to the Aramex office to pick up a few packages that had come in for us.  We have an address in New York where we can have packages sent and then Aramex repackages them and sends them to Qatar.  We have to go into the office to collect them, and we pay 43QR per kilo for every package we get, the cost of the international reshipment.  It makes me crazy to pay for shipping and by kilo after so many years of all free shipping all the time, but that's really a first world problem, isn't it?  Aramex is in the same building as a grocery store I hit frequently, Lulu Express, and I saw that they had pumpkins in stock, so I rushed in to buy two medium ones.  168QR or $49 later, I had my children's future jack-o-lanterns in had....GASP!!  That hurts!

After that, I went to the clubhouse to pick up the tickets for the boys for a carnival sponsored by the husband's work.  They get passes to ride for free for a day on all sorts of rides at Gondolania, an indoor amusement park inside one of the malls (because everything here is inside one of the malls).  We went to this event last year, and it was so much fun, though I almost cracked my head on the roller coaster.  J loved it, however, and went several times, though E was just a bit too short for the ride.  E liked jumping on the trampolines, though after about midday that ride had devolved into shouting matches between the mothers and the ride attendants as people refused to leave when asked, which is sadly typical of events here.  We usually come and leave early, while people are still relatively well behaved!

Then I drove downtown to meet the husband.  I needed to bring him our leftover Sri Lankan rupees because he'd found someone who was going there soon who could exchange them for riyals.  We tried to spend them all before we left the country but failed, mainly because the only kinds of things available in the Colombo Airport duty free shops were refrigerators and washers...because of course they were!

After I met the husband, I headed to Al Rawnaq, a craft/school supply/kitchenware/toy store that happens to be underground.  It's sourced in Asia, mostly, so everything is cheap or relatively cheap given prices here.  I have only been once before on a specific mission to help make some birthday party decorations, but today I decided I was going to walk every aisle just to be a better sense of what was available.  As with all stores here, stock will vary wildly week to week, but I have found that the secret to being able to find a specific something when I need it is being very familiar with the kinds of things found in each store, because you never know which stores have what here.  In my strolls around Al Rawnaq, I found gift bags, a mini Jenga game, Qatar national day flag paraphernalia, hundreds of electric tea kettles, every type of plastic takeaway container you could imagine, metal desktop sculptures of female robots made out of nuts and bolts, and enormous pans for biryani, a popular rice and chicken dish they make here by the ton.  In the end, my purchases included sketch books, paint markers, adhesive-backed sheets of felt, tiny oryx souvenirs I am going to use as stocking stuffers for the boys, a black half apron that may be a part of my Halloween costume, wooden toothpicks (the only ones I have been able to find before are mint-flavored), and stickers I am going to use to catalog our books.  A worthwhile trip!

Next, I headed to Megamart express, the smaller version of the big store that has every American product you might want for incredibly expensive prices, even more than the rest of the stores here.  I only come here about once ever two months, usually to check out their sale/discontinued aisle.  This day I found boxed macaroni and cheese, E's favorite, for half the price it is everywhere else.  I cleared the shelf.  I also got some tandoori seasoning and mango chutney that was half price; these are my favorite Indian imports.  And I buckled and bought the boys some Cheezits.  Which is why I usually avoid this store, so I don't buckle too often!

After Megamart, I headed home.  While I had been gone, our cleaner had arrived, so everything looked beautifully clean!  Having a cleaner is my favorite indulgence here, one I will very much miss whenever we go back to the States for good.  I checked my email, worked on my resume (I'm on the job market now, you know), and at some lunch before the boys got home from school at 1:25pm (Wednesday is their short day, when they get out at 1pm; otherwise they are in school until 2pm, far too long, in my opinion.)  We had a playdate scheduled with a friend of theirs who used to go to the same school but has since moved across town and goes to a new school.  So we entertained him and his little sister and his mom and I chatted and caught up after our vacations and had herbal tea.  Why do we not have tea kettles everywhere in the US?  They are the best inventions EVER!

After we had visited our playroom in the clubhouse when folks got a little rambunctious, our friends left and I went to make dinner: chicken salad and egg salad sandwiches on french bread (I got that at Megamart, too) with cucumbers on the side.  My dinners here are painfully simple, even now.  Side dishes seem to be beyond my abilities, for some reason!  Then J did his homework while I helped: spelling words, reading, literacy flashcards, and Arabic vocabulary.  I finally got the Arabic teacher to send home the vocabulary lists with Latinate pronunciation guides.  Until now, she sent home flashcards and worksheets written completely in Arabic for us to use to quiz the kids.  Umm, I don't speak Arabic, and neither does my son, at least not yet!  We're going to need a bit more help than that, thank you.  The husband arrived around 4pm--the benefit of work starting so early is he gets home early every day--and after dinner he played a little Xbox with the boys.  They had done all their homework and earned a little screen time, but only a very little, before bed.

After the husband and I talked through his day (there wasn't much to say about mine, as you can see, the many preceding paragraphs notwithstanding!), we went to bed, too, quite early by our previous standards.  I think I was in bed by 9:15pm.  I have to get to sleep that early or I am a wreck on our early mornings!  I'm practically a grandma!

Stay tuned for another day in the life, this time the unusual version!

Tips to enjoy Sri Lanka with Kids

We had so much fun on our trip to Sri Lanka, and we learned so much in our travels that I have decided to combine more travelogue and vacation tips into another post.  Look, efficiency!


Tip #1: Use a tour company.

Most tour companies in Sri Lanka will organize ambitious itineraries for you so you can see as much as possible in the time frame that you have.  I didn't like the idea of a different hotel every night and therefore balked at using a company, but I really should have.  Tour companies can negotiate special rates with hotels, know of places to stay not listed anywhere online, and have all sorts of inside information you will benefit from in a place as...um...flexible? as Sri Lanka.  In retrospect, what I should have done was be very specific with a company about what I did and didn't want, not being afraid to modify their suggested itineraries but leaving the arranging of lodgings up to them.

Tip #2: Get a driver you trust; then, trust your driver.

Having a driver is a must in Sri Lanka, for reasons of safety and convenience and even expense.  Most local tour companies will provide you with a driver and a vehicle for a flat rate that includes gas and the driver's meals and accomodations, so finding a driver isn't really all that difficult but it pays to ask around for recommendations and find someone with a proven track record.  We found our driver through a tour company recommended in the Lonely Planet forums and he was good, but I think we could have done better if we had been more aggressive in asking around among our friends who had already gone to Sri Lanka.  As it was, it took me a few days to realize that our particular driver was A, generally more optimistic than accurate, yet B, really knowledgeable if I could just get him to tell me what he really thought about our plans.  In the end, he recommended and arranged some tours we never would have found on our own, resulting in some of our best experiences of the trip, and the hotel he arranged for us on our last night was the best of our trip, by far.

Tip #3: Build in more time than you will think you need.

This is a good rule of thumb for any vacation with kids, but in Sri Lanka this rule was even more important.  Overland travel in Sri Lanka is very, very slow.  A good rule of thumb is to take the amount of time Google Maps says it will take you to get to a given destination, double it, and then add on another hour or so for good measure.  The serpentine local roads make travel take much longer than it seems like it should, and the two expressways are so far away from where people actually live that it takes forever to get to them, making the fact that travel on them is faster almost moot.  In addition, as we found, there are so many unexpected places to stop along the way and you will want to be able to stop and see them.  On our trip, we made unplanned stops at many fabulous restaurants, a sea turtle hatchery, a spice garden, a woodworking factory, a batik factory, and a beautiful waterfall.  These stops made our travel times even longer but they were totally worth it!  Plus, and this is key for any trip with kids, of course: leave enough time for downtime.  My boys were happiest collecting shells and building an interminable sand castle and playing in the top of the tree house cottage and we were happy we had left lots of time for them to do just that.

Tip #4: Suspend your reliance on the internet.

Though every hotel listed WiFi as being available, in almost all cases this wasn't really the case.  If you need to do any research about your trip, do it before you leave home and print out anything you think you might need, including itineraries, hotel confirmations, visas, e-tickets, etc.  I was able to check email twice the whole week and was never able to upload any pictures or blog or anything like that.  We streamed Netflix for the kids once.  In other words, it was a real (electronic) vacation, which was actually great but was also a bit frustrating when we were trying to look up information en route. Along those same lines, bring as many converters and chargers as you can for your electronic devices.  We brought three but still didn't have the right one for many of the outlets in most of our hotel rooms.  Fortunately, most of the rooms had at least one adapter for the television, and we had brought a dual USB charger so we were always able to get everything charged in the end with some creative planning, but it would have been so helpful if we had realized that Sri Lankan outlets are an entity unto themselves and not part of the standard universal adapter collection.

Tip #5: Be prepared.

Even though we traveled carry-on only, I took with us many items I was glad I had brought.  We used my custom-filled first aid kit multiple times for abrasions, cuts, and even a fever (E had one for our first two nights in country, of course!).  I brought 3 ounces of Skin-so-Soft insect repellant and wished I had brought twice that much.  As it was, we ran out on the last day, but fortunately that night the winds were very strong and we were right on the ocean, so we were lucky.  We used lots of sunscreen.  My motion sickness pills kept me alive during our interminable and rough whale riding adventure so I was able to nurse E through his own pitiful bout of sea sickness.  I wish I had brought twice or even three times as much candy/dried fruit/granola bars for eating on the go while we were tramping around through various sites because grocery stores and ready-made, packaged food was almost impossible to come by.  Bring an extra (empty) bag; you will most certainly come back with more souvenirs than you think.  Do not plan on finding laundry facilities anywhere.  I don't think I saw a washing machine the entire trip and was happy to have planned on enough clothes for the duration.  Do not forget hand sanitizer, twice as much as you think you will need.  And bring travel blankets!  I put one in for each of the boys and me because we had night flights both ways, and we ended up using them every night of our vacation but one.  Most Sri Lankan hotels, even many of the fancier ones, provide bottom and top sheets only, which isn't enough if you're running the AC to keep mosquitos at bay at night.

Tip #6: Pack light.

That being said, pack as light as you possibly can.  There are not a whole lot of elevators in Sri Lanka!  We loved the freedom of being able to pick up all our backpacks and carry them ourselves, and we completely freaked out all the porters and hotel employees everywhere we went when we calmly shouldered our own bags and took them to our room ourselves.  I would not have liked to pull roller bags through the often muddy roads, particularly near the beaches during monsoon season.

Tip #7: Embrace the adventure!

Everyone around us, including our youngest, was throwing up on the whale watching tour...but now it's a great story!  The train ride ended up taking 4 hours and we rode through the rain and the bathroom door wouldn't stay shut so the smell was often overpowering...but we loved every minute of it!   In one town, no restaurants were open for dinner before 7:30pm, there were no grocery stores, and all the vending stalls were only selling bananas and raw vegetables we had no way to cook...but we didn't starve!  We were attacked by ants in not one but two hotel rooms; elephants demanding fruit blocked the road on our way to the national parks and then ambled after us when they felt we hadn't given them enough; and the boys were playing away in the sand at one outdoor restaurant on the beach until the owner's puppies came over and peed everywhere like they did it every day, because they probably did...and we still had fun!   

Sri Lanka Part 4: Mirissa and Weligama and our departure

After our abrupt departure from Katagarama, we headed straight for the beach.  We drove to Weligama, a lovely little beach on the south coast, getting warmer with every kilometer.  Our "hotel" there was really the most shocking yet: we stayed on the third floor of a place that was under construction.  The bare concrete stairs up had no hand rail or wall of any kind and were a complete death trap.  On our floor, two rooms were finished and two more were merely concrete shells, open to the outside with no barriers whatsoever.  Luckily, I was too tired to fight to find another place so I simply locked the kids in our room with me whenever we were there and held on to them tightly whenever we had to leave.  Weligama is still mostly a locals only sort of fishing beach with just a few places teaching surfing to tourists.  After we dumped our bags, we headed right across the street to play on the beach.  The husband body surfed, the boys played in the waves and made sand castles, and I picked up shells, of which there were many, one of the most diverse collections of shells I have ever seen on a beach, actually.  We had an absolutely peaceful afternoon, which was fabulous.  When it got dark, we wandered back to the road and looked for a place to eat, settling for an open-air restaurant where we were the only Westerners.  At long last, the husband decided to go all in and try the full-on Sri Lankan curry dishes (we had been avoiding them in favor of keeping our stomachs under control) and was very, very pleased with the results.  So pleased, in fact, we ate there again the next night and tried some different curries, all of which were also delicious, as well as their bananas in crepes.

Oh, what's this?  Just a huge monitor lizard crossing the
road, minding his own business.

The next morning we got up early once again, this time for a whale watching trip.  We're going to file this particular journey under the headings "sounded like a good idea at the time" and "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger."  I had prepared in advance and taken motion sickness pills, but the seas were very, very rough and the boat's captain was very, very determined.  After not very long at all, people started to throw up...often...everywhere.  And after about 45 minutes, E joined them.  E continued to be ill every half hour or so for the duration of the journey, which went on for a long time as we chased a blue whale another boat had sighted.  Along the way, we did see a huge sea turtle swimming and several groups of dolphins who swam and cavorted by the boat for quite awhile, but in the meantime, conditions on the boat deteriorated rapidly.  In the end, at least 80% of the passengers were vomiting at one point or another, though, thankfully, J and the husband and I were not among them.  At one point, several miserable and vocal tourists begged to go back ashore but the crew said they wanted everyone who wanted to see a whale so they would try to go where they knew one was.  These tourists tried to bully everyone else into saying they wanted to go home, too, and while most of us were silent (I was cradling a vomiting E at the time, actually, but wasn't about to get involved) one father with two young boys who weren't sick and were very, very excited about seeing the whale said he would like to stay, at which point a shouting match broke out, which was bad enough until one of the other tourists asked the father where he was from (his wife was wearing a hijab and I later found out they were from Abu Dhabi--she and I were chatting whenever she wasn't sick herself).  The father shouted that it was none of his business, which it wasn't, and then the other tourist started shouting more threats and advanced to the front of the boat and both had to be restrained and it was quite dramatic and sad.  In the end, those who could did see a blue whale spouting three times and a fin--not much, but enough to assure the crew that no one would ask for a refund.  We finally limped back into harbor many hours later.  Not the highlight of E's trip!

Family shot while still at the harbor.

E before we left the dock.

J was super excited for the trip.

Near the end of the voyage.

J as we came back into port.

That afternoon, to recover, we went to the Mirissa Beach Paradise Resort for lunch overlooking the ocean.  After more curry (again, delicious), we went to Mirissa Beach, which was lovely, definitely a tourist beach, pristine and well-groomed.  While the boys went to the water, I went with the driver on an impromptu trip to nearby batik factory.  It was up in the mountains, a bustling little factory with a room piled to the ceiling with piles of fabric.  They had the most beautiful pieces, so I bought more than I had planned and I really enjoyed my visit, until the driver started stamping his feet before we were ready to leave, and told me this area was famous...for leeches!  Oh, of course!  Meanwhile,  at the beach, the waves were HUGE according to the boys (3-5 foot swells, actually), and we all had so much fun there for the rest of the afternoon.  We were so sandy and salty and exhausted and happy we didn't even mind our half of a hotel when we got back.

And the next day was our last.  It was a busy day: after we left the beach, enroute to Negombo, where we were going to stay the night before our 4am departure, we visited a sea turtle hatchery, another excellent beachside restaurant (I had chicken kotu roti, my favorite Sri Lankan dish of all time) and the Dutch fort at Galle, as well as a maritime museum and an archeological museum inside the fort.  Our hotel in Negombo, arranged by our driver, was the best of all, a resort right on the beach with a pool and a restaurant on a veranda.  Our room even had a balcony!  We swam and I shopped for a few last minute souvenirs and we packed and got ready to leave in the wee hours.

Sea turtle eggs!

And sea turtles!

J about to try king coconut juice...

...it wasn't his favorite!

Napkin sculptures in Galle: a voodoo doll...

...an elfin shoe...

...a peacock...

...and a bird of paradise (or, as I like to call it. the Sydney
Opera House).

On the ramparts at Fort Galle.

Our rampart selfie.

Archeology museum.

Our last trip to the beach.

Just before sunset.

Almost dark...

Sri Lanka says goodbye with a flourish!

All in all, a fast-paced and successful vacation.  We love Sri Lanka!