Almost the latest

This was written on Friday, but then I was running out of time and
forgot to send this here. Anyway, plenty of interesting stuff going
on, most of the time, but it would be too hard to go into detail right
now. My classes are still going pretty well. I feel like I've been
especially busy this week though, was pretty tired yesterday. Last
weekend we had a field trip out to a tsunami-affected area on the east
coast, which was cool, good trip, but emotionally and physically hard
on everyone. Then on Monday half the group had come down with some
sort of stomach bug, three seriously enough to miss class, the rest
just feeling kind of queasy and not good. I got that on Tuesday, and
spent as much of the day as possible in bed. The next day I was
pretty much back to normal, although not perfect.

This group seems really prone to illness and injury though, it's kind
of strange. They're pretty much all on top of their game academically
and they behave pretty well, better than my year, but they get sick at
the drop of a hat. My year no one went to the hospital for anything
that I recall, well, except for the male assistant, who got dengue.
But seriously, we've had five people go to the hospital for various
illnesses and a sprained ankle, plus several more people who've
needed to spend part of the day in the sick room at the center,
missing some class. It's crazy, what's wrong with them? I've never
heard of anything like this. Although I've got to say, it still
sounds better than last year's group, which was too big and had way
too many overly negative people in it.

On Wednesday Sarah and I went to see a talk by a Fulbrighter who'd
been an ISLE student with me. She's finishing up her project, on love
and marriage in modern Sri Lanka, and goes back to the US in three
weeks. Wednesday was her last night in Kandy, so she had a
celebratory dinner in Kandy, which was fun. Sometimes it seems like
we spend so much time at the ISLE center, and it's great to get out.
Tonight there's an all-night ritual going on at the university which
the students in the Myth and Ritual Class are required to see. The
director and her family are also going. Since I'm not the assistant
for M&R, I get to stay at home by myself. I plan to watch movies
and/or do more reading. Maybe I'll invite someone over to hang out,
if I can.

Added later: I ended up having a nice, quiet movie night. I watched
"Unleashed", the latest Jet Li movie, which, while flawed, was better
than I'd expected and gets a solid thumbs up, if you like violent
movies. I also watched "The Longest Yard", but think the time would
have been better spent sleeping, especially as I was awoken at the
crack of dawn by a trishaw driver calling to see if he needed to pick
anyone up. No classes on Sunday, dude. The center's not even open.
Managed to use the day well though, fiinished my book and spent all
afternoon doing taiji, clearing my head after a long, busy week.

This morning Sarah and Iouri (Lynn, the director,'s Russian husband)
and I drove up Hantana mountain (the one that's behind us, you'll see
pictures eventually) and went for a jog through a tea plantation up
there, getting back before Sinhala class at 8. There were lots of
clouds, but the clouds here are great, all textured, layered, with sun
spotting through, very different from Yangshuo, which was just varying
shades of gray. Also you're so much higher than everything nearby up
there, it's really something, and terrific just getting out and
running around. If I were someone else I might describe it as
glorious. Hope to do it again soon.