Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Since we were feeling a little lonely & jealous that we wouldn't get a big Thanksgiving meal this year, we took off for the beach. We went about an hour and a half south of Colombo to Bentota. Man, it was beautiful! We were surprised we hadn't heard much about it. This has to be the best beach Jesse and I have seen thus far in our life. Granted we haven't been to Hawaii, which I hear there is no comparison, but still they were amazing.


The waves were great, b/c they were quite small for Rachel to play in, but they also had bigger ones farther out, so Jesse had fun as well. Usually Rachel is scared of the ocean, but she overcame her fear, and had a fun time playing in the waves. She also learned to swim in the pool by herself. (well with arm bands on)


The hotel had a great location. On one side was the ocean, while on the other side was a river. So Jesse was able to go water skiing as well. We also went to a turtle hatchery, and went for a catamaran ride on a lake. So as you can see we stayed pretty busy. We had a great time...it almost made up for missing out on family, friends, and food. : )

Just Watching the Game

itunes did a great thing this past week, they decided to put up the Michigan vs. Ohio State game, so people could download it. Since we have not been able to watch any football this season, we were quite excited to be able to watch a game. We waited and waited for the game to come up on itunes. We figured it would at least be up by Sunday, but no we had to wait till Monday afternoon to be able to start downloading it. Once we started to download it we were in for another surprise, it said it would take 16 hours to download! So for the next two days we tried to download the game. We finally had it all downloaded by Tuesday evening. So we invited Moga (a guy who works with Jesse) over to watch some American football.


So even though we had to wait forever to watch, and we had to watch it on Jesse's small computer screen, it was still great! Rachel cheered for the Buckeyes (thanks Brian), while Jesse cheered for Michigan. Moga even seemed to enjoy it. : ) Jesse just wishes that they would put up the Husker games too.

Laundry Day

I know you will all be excited to know that this post is about laundry. But I feel I must fill you in with what it's like here. : )

First off if you want to get any laundry done, you have to make sure that you start by 8:30am, or it won't get done by the time you go to bed. We do have a wash machine, but as you can see by the picture it is a small washer, and not only that, but the 2:49 on the washer....that is how long it takes to do a load...yes 2 hours and 49 minutes.


So after the laundry is clean, you then have to hang it out to dry. Not a big deal, but in rainy season, it can be a pain. And since it is so humid out, it takes all day to dry, & I mean all day. This is again why you have to make sure you put the laundry in first thing in the morning. If you can get it out by noon, it is usually dry by about 8pm.


Then the next day is ironing. Because everything is line dried, it's not very soft, so ironing tends to help. Thankfully Rachel loves to iron! : )


I miss the old days when I could do 3 loads of laundry a day, and it really only requiring about 15 minutes of my time. But I am very grateful I don't have to do it by hand!

Ahh.. The Pitter Patter of Jackboots in the Morning

This morning, at around 4:30 am, we were torn from our slumber by a sudden, loud and assertive BANG-bang-BANG on our door. Jesse jumped up quickly, tossed on some shorts and went into the living room. By the time he got there, the would-be visitors were banging again and yelling "Police." Somewhat out of it from the dream that he was still halfway in, Jesse went to the door and cracked it open, asking what they wanted. He faced six people in full military garb - five men, one woman and three machine guns - who didn't appear to want to explain the purpose of their visit. The group started moving into the house and Jesse asked them to wait while he made sure that everyone was properly dressed. They politely obliged, but swiftly moved into the living room as soon as the bedroom door was shut after Jesse asked me to get dressed.

While I got dressed and Rachel wandered into the living room, asking what was going on, the commander of the little brigade demanded our passports. Of course, Jesse had left his passport in the office, making for a few tense moments, as he imagined how they would react when he realized that he didn't have what they were demanding (they ended up accepting Jesse's driver's license). One soldier kind of poked his head into the room while they looked over the identification, asked us questions about where we came from and wrote some stuff down. Apparently satisfied after about five minutes, they left as quickly as they came, moving on to the apartment across the hall.

Obviously this was a first for us. While we had heard about the police "sweeps" in the night, we had not yet had the opportunity to experience it first hand. Rachel thought it was kind of fun and new - Jesse and I found it new, but not fun. After the adrenaline worked its way out of our systems, we all settled down for the rest of our night's sleep.

Here's a picture of a traditional military man w/ machine gun. Jesse didn't think it would be a good idea if I asked the people this morning if I could take their picture for our blog.

Kid Friendly

One of the things that I love about Sri Lanka is how kid friendly they are. People love kids, and always make them feel as comfortable as possible. For example, at one of the restaurants we love to go to, there is a room full of toys & a babysitter. Rachel loves going here to go play while we wait for our food to come. It makes going to dinner so nice!



And our malls always have a huge kids play area. One big department store here offers free babysitting while you shop. Why don't they have this in the states? Jesse is quick to remind me "liability" --isn't he a great lawyer! : )