A few months back, the embassy hooked us up with another US
military family living in Colombo, which was an incredible asset in preparing
for our trip. They became our social
sponsors, acting as our in-country guides before (and even after) we arrived. We were fortunate to be able to connect with
them via email ahead of time so that we could ask all of our most pressing
questions about what to expect, what to pack and what to buy ahead of time that
would be hard to find or get while living in Sri Lanka. This was a game changer and, unfortunately,
not something that this family had available to them before they arrived in
Colombo. We learned that they also had 2
kids, ages 4 and 5, so we were excited that the kiddos would have some friendly
connections once we arrived.
Meeting us at the airport and waiting with the van, was another
couple (Sara and Tyler), that Ryan had been in contact with before our arrival
as well. This couple has been stationed
here for the past year, as Tyler has been the Army FAO representative
here. I hadn’t met or spoken with them
before, but was so relieved to see them at the airport as I realized the number
of questions I had was growing exponentially the longer I breathed Sri Lankan
air. We were so glad to see their
friendly faces emerging from the van and, although I had no idea who she was at
the time, Sara and I embraced - her in welcome and me breathing a sigh of relief
for her presence. We were being hurried
to climb into the van while taxis, tuk-tuks, and cars whipped around us. Our driver had loaded all of the bags into
the car and we didn’t realize until we were already in that, in our rush to get
out of the road, we didn’t grab the car seats out of their travel bags. They were now at the bottom of our very big
luggage pile and, ashamed though I am to say it, in my exhaustion I abused the
lack of car seat laws in this country and agreed that we should just press on
with Kiddo in a regular seat belt and Little Boy on my lap. Welcome to South Asia.
On the 45-minute drive from the airport, Ryan and I pelted
Tyler and Sara with questions, while they simultaneously offloaded information
that we didn’t even know to ask about.
Sara was awesome, having even brought juice boxes and applesauce pouches
for the kids that she had picked up earlier at another Embassy worker’s moving
out sale. She and Tyler live in the same
building as us and worked so hard to make sure that the place was in order
before our arrival. Again, this was
something that they did not have available to them prior to their arrival last
year. They even pre-stocked our fridge and
cupboards with essentials like milk, bread, peanut butter, cereal and snacks
for the kids since we came in on Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend, when
the Embassy would be closed through Monday.
They also schooled us on all of the finer points of Sri Lankan money,
Colombo taxis and travel, cell phone usage, and grocery shopping, among a
variety of other very important topics.
We picked their brains all the way back to our building, where they
helped us get upstairs to our amazing new digs.
I could quickly see that these two people would be an invaluable
resource for us as we settled in.
Along with our in-country contact information a few months
back, the Embassy
also kindly sent us an email with pictures of our new
place. At the time, we were relieved to
see that we would be living in a nice building, near the coast, that had modern
amenities, including air conditioning and a modern kitchen. The pictures that were sent, though, also showed
a beautiful apartment with spectacular views of the Indian Ocean from almost
every room. At the time, we thought for
sure that these images were just stock footage that they send to every new
tenant. We were wrong. They were actual images from our actual
apartment in Colombo and as we walked through the front door and realized this fact,
we were blown away. We were looking at an
amazing, spacious, open layout with a full view of the city and the ocean from
every room. Oh, and 4 balconies overlooking the ocean. The space had been furnished by the Embassy,
which is why we left almost every piece of furniture we own in storage in
California. They were also sweet enough
to send a couple boxes of toys for the kiddos, which was vital to our survival
upon arrival. The kids had been playing
with the same suitcase of toys for over a month now and the promise of new playthings (even if they were on loan) was so exciting to them. We also soon discovered that the building has
a gym, dry cleaner, café, squash courts, pool and play structure. Not too shabby.
Sara and Tyler soon broke the bad news to us that they were
actually set to leave late that night for a 3-week trip to Nepal. Although we were excited for them to go on
this trip, we were also selfishly bummed that our new friends, cultural buffers
and towers of stability were about to fly away, literally, into the night. So they wasted no time and jumped right in to
help us get settled. Tyler took Ryan
down the street to get a SIM card for his phone and set up with an
understanding on how the currency works around here. Sri Lanka uses its own Rupee system
(different from that of India) and the current exchange rate is about 100
LKR(Sri Lankan Rupees) equaling $.68.
So, 1000 Rupees is roughly $7 and so on.
They left a few helpful notes around the house concerning metric
temperature translations for the oven, Rupee to Dollar calculations for
reference, and some notes on using the local form of taxi – the tuk-tuk. More on that later. Meanwhile, I looked around our place taking
an inventory of the furniture and the room layout, noticing that we did not
have a crib or small bed for Little Boy.
I was immediately absorbed by this problem, since him not having his own
fenced in space would wreak havoc on our ability to get any kind of rest until
our shipments arrived in 2-4 weeks. Sara
was amazing, jumping on the phone (let me remind you this was Friday in the
late afternoon, before a long holiday weekend) trying to find someone who could
solve this problem for us. I had little
hope of an answer and began the MacGuyver mental aerobics of how to fashion a
crib style bed out of the available pieces of furniture in the apartment. Much to my surprise, Sara was able to get a
hold of someone who thought they might be able to find someone to help us
out. Within the next 2 hours, we had a
crib rolling through our front door and set up in the room nearest ours. *Phew.
Dodged a bullet there. Thank God
for Sara and Justin, the helpful Embassy friend on the other end of the line. I sent Ryan to work with a thank you note and
a loaf of banana bread on his first day at the Embassy for Justin, the great
crib crisis resolver. 
Anyway, after about an hour or so, Sara and Tyler headed
back downstairs to get themselves organized for their flight out and let us get
settled in to our new space for a while, inviting us down for dinner a little
later. We unpacked a little, let the
kids run around and I closed my eyes on the couch for what felt like (and what
may actually have been) 5 minutes. I
will remind you that neither Ryan nor I have had almost any sleep since our
4-hour nap in London, which was now almost 24 hours and lots of kiddo wrangling and road weariness
behind us. It was just about time to
head downstairs for dinner and I think, right about then, is when we felt the
exhaustion begin to creep in. We needed
to eat, though, and these would be our last moments with our Colombo
touchstones before they left, so we soldiered on downstairs.
Sara and Tyler were kind enough to lend us the keys to their
apartment, in the event that we needed any kitchen items or whatever, while
they were away and while we waited for our shipments to arrive. This was incredibly kind and generous of them, especially since we were, essentially, strangers. I made a mental note to have them over for
dinner the second they came back from Nepal.
We also met our social sponsors and email pals, The Greuel Family,
invited by Sara and Tyler for us to get to know in person. We excused ourselves from their presence
around 7, after dinner and some more conversation, and made our way back up to
our apartment, where we all promptly changed into pajamas and crashed into our
respective beds.
I wish I could report that we all slept soundly for 12
hours, but I would be lying. Instead,
Little Boy woke up around 1:30 or 2 in the morning, ready and raring for
action. I got up with him, got him a snack
and we played out in the living room for a few hours, until he was ready to go
back down a little before 5. I was just
crawling back into bed when Kiddo came out of her room, ready to wake up for
the day having slept 10 straight hours, so up I stayed with her as well. Needless to say, we all spent the next couple
of days lying around, watching dvds and trying to adjust our bodies to this new
time zone. There was a lot of napping
through that weekend. We did manage to get
out though! That first Saturday morning,
we walked down the street to one of the nearby hotels, which we heard had
several restaurants, in order to find some breakfast.
Sri Lanka had just celebrated Vesak a couple of days before
we arrived – which we were pretty sad to have missed – and there were still
lantern decorations everywhere. Vesak
falls on the full moon in May and commemorates the major events in the life of Buddha,
essentially. Sri Lanka is a largely
Buddhist country and every month the full moon, or Poya, is celebrated as a
national holiday – meaning no school or work on these days, if they fall during
the week. Each Poya signifies something
different in the Buddhist tradition, some being more heavily celebrated than
others. May’s Poya is called Vesak Poya
and is celebrated for several days leading up to the actual Poya, which
culminates with a huge lantern festival and parade. We missed this celebration by a day. Bummer.
Anyway, the hotel we walked to, The Cinnamon Grande, still had their
lanterns hung and I was fascinated to see that they were made out of recycled
water bottles – they were beautiful! Aside
from the view from our apartment, this was our first real introduction to Sri
Lanka and as we walked past the immaculately manicured lawn and recycled water
bottle lanterns, I grew more excited to learn about this new place that we
would be calling home. 
