Week Without Walls (Jan. 19-23)

This expereince was definetly a useful outing, even though we were not in our classes learning math, english etc. We travelled as a group to the far south eastern town of Hambantota, where are school had been helping after the tsunami had struck. Reaching our destination the differences from the city life of Colombo to the starkly rural landscape of our destination was striking. In Colombo, you complain about the ruts in the road, the traffic jams, the cable not working properly etc. Travelling about the area surrounding Hambantota though it was like entering a different world where cable tv did not exist along with the many cars and other utensils that make up cities today. In fact, the historic inuagaration of President Barack Obama (Jan 20th) seemed to pass without even the slightest whisper, whereas if I was at home I would have watched it along with the rest of my family, as if I was right there in Washington.

Maybe this difference struck me so sharply simply because in recent years I had been only moving from city to city and had come to forget that that space of land in a country, especially those like India or Sri Lanka, only represent a small fraction of space and people.