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| Deployment #2, just after they flew away |
One of the best things about military life is the
communities in which you find yourself when you move around. We have been fortunate in our travels to have
been a part of some small, but tightly knit communities that have really become
special to us. When we lived in San
Diego, Ryan’s squadron, The Purple Foxes, was definitely like an extended
family for us. It was a unique community
of people all bonded by a legendary history.
We spent almost 5 years together and survived 2 deployments as a group,
supporting each other, playing together and starting families in Southern
California. Our families all keep track
of each other still and we try to reunite any time any of us are in the same
town.
In an odd twist, one Fox family in particular got selected
for the FAO program at the same time that we did. We were already close with The Jones’ when we
lived in San Diego, so were thrilled when we found out we would also be living
in Monterey at the same time as them.
Transitioning away from our happy spot in Southern California was made a
little easier knowing we would have the companionship of these friends as we continued
down the Marine Corps road. They helped
us get set up in our amazing house near Cannery Row, we shared dinners and
birthdays and holidays together and even added a little boy to each of our
families during our time in Monterey. 
After a few weeks of planning and coordinating, Cassidy
brought her two kiddos over to Colombo.
Zac was still wrapping up a trip in Vietnam when they arrived, so he
followed along later. That gave Cassidy,
me and the kiddos several days to do some fun Colombo stuff while Ryan got work
done at the Embassy. We spent a lot of
time at home, letting the kids play while Cassidy and I chatted over 1000 piece
jigsaw puzzles. We also went to the
park, out to lunch and to a few close places around town. We had only been in Colombo about a month
when they arrived, so we were still getting familiar with everything. It was so nice to have friends that felt like
family around to hang out with, we spent a lot of time chatting about their
experiences abroad and framing our expectations for international travel with
small children. Zac and Cassidy’s kids
are 3 ½ and 1, so pretty close in age to our own. We had a lot of information to exchange.
Once Zac arrived, we celebrated Independence Day together at
our home and prepared for our first Sri Lankan road trip. Appropriately, our first excursion abroad matched
up with the Jones’ last. We packed up
our bags, our gear and our kids and piled into a big van with our driver Kuruna
and set off to explore some of the more central parts of Sri Lanka. More specifically, we were headed for
Dambulla, Sigiriya and Kandy. As we
settled into our seats and began pulling away from our building, Zac turned on
the song “Holiday Road,” which made me laugh out loud while simultaneously
making me thankful we were able to share this exciting adventure with such
wonderful friends. We drove off singing,
“Holiday Rooooaaaaaaaad,” ready for whatever Griswold style mishaps and fun
were likely to come our way.
Once we got going, we all fell into our own little
reveries. The kids all fell asleep after
a little bit of driving, while we adults read/closed our eyes/stared out the
window taking in the scenery. This was
our family’s first venture outside of Colombo, so although I intended on some
good magazine reading time, I found my eyes glued out the window, trying to
take it all in as we drove.
It was during this time that I truly realized how driving in
Sri Lanka is on a whole other level than anywhere else I have ever been before. Here’s the thing, even though you aren’t
going very fast, there is a constant kind of lurching forwards and back,
particularly with the kind of stick shift van we had for this trip. Because traffic, twisty roads, lane swerving,
and pedestrians and dogs cause constant shifts while driving, the van spends
most of its time speeding up and slowing down over and over and over again, all
while twisting down winding roads. Not
to mention the fact that you have to quickly disengage your reflex to grip the
seat every time you swerve into the other lane to pass the vehicle in front of
you only to play chicken with an oncoming bus, tuk, motorcycle, or cyclist. The center line is more like a suggestion,
not necessarily an indication of lanes or rules. At this
point, I decided looking out the side windows was my best option…
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| Wyoming - so beautiful but miles and miles of empty space |
In a different way, I had these same thoughts driving
through all of the small towns along the way to Dambulla, peering out at the houses and people passing by. But different from Wyoming, there are countless towns here, with lots
of side streets, homes and people. And here
they are having the same kind of Sunday I might have if I was still living in
the States, but somehow it still seems like another planet. These are the things that
make me realize just how incredibly vast this world truly is, but also how small it
is too. Small towns on the other side of
the world make me realize that so much of life is exactly the same everywhere
on the planet, it just looks a little different depending on your latitude and
longitude. Everyone here is doing their
market shopping on Sunday afternoon or heading home to get dinner ready. They are raking their front yards and
sweeping their front stoops. They are
washing cars, playing Cricket, and carrying sleepy toddlers home for nap time. And yet, despite the sameness of it all, it
feels so vastly different here. These aren't manicured streets, sidewalks and lawns I'm seeing as we drive by. This is a mass of humanity, moving about seamlessly among tuk tuks, bikes, motorcyles, cars and busses. People shopping at roadside market stands, stepping over broken curbs and scattered bits of trash in their sarongs and sarees. It's the same basic plotline but the characters and setting are vastly different. I find comfort and fascination in all of that.And then there is the sudden sound of kids vomiting in the car….wait, what?! As I was writing those last notes, I was torn out of my existential reverie by the sounds of Little Boy whining, then shouting, then vomiting the entire contents of his stomach all over himself and his car seat right next to me. Apparently, the constant push and pull of the van finally got the better of him. We lurched forward through the traffic to a nearby grocery store parking lot as he helplessly whimpered at me. We jumped out and removed Little Boy, car seat and all, onto the dusty dirt driveway of Cargill’s grocery. I ran inside to buy some soap, water and napkins to try and clean the massacre. We stripped him down in the parking lot, rinsed him off, changed his clothes and gave him a small snack to settle him, then stripped the car seat and did our best to clean and rinse then recover it in plastic bags to continue on our way. He had been rear facing, which for this winding, jerky ride was, in hind sight, a bad choice. We flipped him around, discarded our pukey trash and continued on down the road. Zac played “Holiday Road” again as we pulled away, making us all laugh and adding a little necessary levity to the situation.
Not 40 minutes later, I was in the middle of mapping out a
place to stop for a rest when, from the backseat, Kiddo could be heard
wretching. Thankfully, Cassidy was
primed and ready, helping her catch most of it in a bag. We pulled over again, cleaned her up, and
continued along. The winding roads, the
constant gas then brake style of driving and Kuruna’s insistence that we were
“just an hour away” were not working well for us. I have done lots of road
trips with my kids that have covered many more miles than we intended for this
trip and I’ve never gotten carsick myself or had one of the kids get carsick
along the way. I was honestly shocked
when Little Boy got sick. But I was
downright flabbergasted when Kiddo threw up.
This situation was a sharp lesson in some of the tangible differences
between experiences in America versus Sri Lanka.
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| A Seeming Oasis in the Midst of Our Troubled Times |
Feeling the sting of defeat at a moment crucial to our
sanity, we had to make a decision on the spot.
Press on and just try to get there or find another resting point and
take a break? Kuruna assured us it was
only another hour or so to our hotel. None
of us believed him, but we still decided to turn on a movie for the kids, pass
out some snacks and fruit, and press on.
1 hour very slowly turned into 2 and a half, when our third
puking casualty in the back of the van hit: Cassidy’s little one had just
succumbed to the lurching of the van as well.
She cleaned it up as we drove, insisting that we should just get
there. So that’s what we did. I found myself watching the map as we slowly
crawled toward the hotel, feeling like if I watched our progress and could see
how close (or how far we still were) somehow that would make it more
bearable. But finally, around 8:30, we
pulled into the Sundaras Resort. We all
leapt from the van, anxious to escape the pukey fumes of the van, get cleaned up
and finally eat the dinner we had been postponing for 3 hours. Thankfully the hotel continued their dinner service
until 10, so we were glad for small miracles such as this.
While I had been watching the map, I imagined this “resort”
to be a little more refined than what it turned out to be. Don’t get me wrong, it was perfectly
respectable. The staff even kindly
greeted us at the front desk with some delicious, fresh juice upon our
arrival. But when one hears the word
“resort,” a certain expectation is created.
This was another example of my education in the art of "lowering your expectations." It's necessary to remember that most things do
not typically mean the same thing here as they mean in other places.
We dropped our things in our rooms and had our first look at
Sri Lankan style hotel hospitality in one of the smaller towns. Our room was small, but large enough for us
each to have our own sleeping space.
There was A/C (yay!), although it was a single wall mounted unit that we
were encouraged to keep off unless we were in the room using it. Through the second door we discovered the
bathroom was partially outside – quite a surprise! The toilet and sink were in an all tile room
that opened to a walled in outside room, where the shower was located. The shower head was over a slab of concrete
raised over some rocks, covered by trees.
There were no lights in this shower space, just the dull beam from the
dingy light in the tile room. The kids
thought it was awesome that there were geckos climbing all over the walls and
that they could shower outside – I was less impressed, but again, it was
perfectly fine. I was glad for the geckos, as I hoped they would keep some of the mosquitos out of our room while we slept. It seemed that our room was a bit more rustic than maybe some of the others in the place, but it was definitely manageable and we fared just fine in it.
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| This was during the day, at night it was also pretty while lit up |
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| Can you spot our thirsty new friend? |
To Be Continued...
