more work, more beach

This week has been busy with all of the follow up work I have had to do after the village trip. Going to the village is fun and all but now I have to tackle this project and analyze all of my data. Things have also been a bit hectic with Mark's arrival and Nuzzy's (one of my co-workers) wedding.

I attended my first Sri Lankan Muslim wedding on Friday to see Nuzzy get married and it was quite exciting for me. I was firstly surprised to see all of the women in saris. In India, its the Hindus who wear the Saris and the Muslims who would probably deck out in the fancy Punjabi suits. The bride herself was wearing a Western-style wedding dress which was also quite a surprise to me. Party favors are always small wrapped pieces of cake and they are distributed by female friends of the bride during the reception. (I was recruited for this job). The reception itself was much like a Bohra reception as there was a procession of the bride and groom, dinner, and photos. Also, just as in a Bohra reception, the non-religious people snuck off to another part of the hotel for drinks.

This weekend I was off in Unawatuna again. Its the lovely beach that I wrote about on my first weekend here. It was quite idyllic with coconut palms, white sands, and clean blue ocean. There has been some trouble in that region after a bus bombing about an hour North. I did not take the bus there, needless to say. It was a bit depressing though because while it was a lovely weekend, the hotels had lots of vacancies and people were talking about how the tourist numbers just keep getting worse. The hawkers seemed a little more desperate, and guesthouses kept slashing the prices as an incentive to stay.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to the turtle hatchery where we got to take three-day old baby turtles and release them into the sea. It was adorable to watch the turtles struggle, then scoot along on the sand, and then finally make it into the ocean. We kept a watchful eye out for the crows to make sure none got eaten along the way.