Arrivin to Sri Lanka
Hey ho! I'm here, finally! Sadly I cannot upload any pictures yet since I've just been here for five hours or so, and I'm now sitting at the AIESEC office without my camera cable. Anywho, let's start from the beginning. There I was in Helsinki-Vantaa airport. The girl at the check-in had to call help from her colleague who advised to contact the team leader who then finally heard from someone that it's okay to go to Sri Lanka without the return ticket or visa. After some 20 minutes I was finally on my way... Well, on my way for waiting the first plane. The plane model was Fokker, you know, one of those small fockers. It wasn't that steady in turbulence and no way did they serve anything during the flight. However, I managed to find my way to Vienna airport where I spent the next four hours, reading Sinuhe Egyptian (the #1 Finnish novel of all times), listening Metallica and CMX and enjoying the solitude with some cigarettes and Heineken. Finally departing to Colombo I, surprise surprise, bumbed into a Finnish family who was going to spend next two years in Sri Lanka, working for Red Cross. Well I didn't have that much time to chat with them so I just enjoyed the catering and The Pink Panther movie (not as crappy as I thought). I couldn't really sleep at night due to lack of space... and maybe a hunch of excitement in my veins.Finally I arrived to Colombo airport, went to toilet and had to explain to the old Tamil guy that I don't have rupees yet, got my luggage after a while of waiting and, poof, there they were, my new friends... the Colombo North executive board Kasun, Madhu, Thilini, Isuru and Thilanka. They are just the sweetest people. We had such a blast going from the airport to the K house (my flat): I even got to taste the king coconut juice right out of the coconut! As I didn't expect pretty much anything, own room with a fan and mosquito net and a community style household clearly exceeded those expectations. Just next to our house there is another trainee house called Rome. Birds and other animals are making their exotic sounds right next to my window, there's a king coconut tree on the yard and the place is only a walk away from the AIESEC office. After I had taken a quick shower we went to have my first genuine Sri Lankan lunch. It was awesome! Although it wasn't as spicy as I had heard. Well, there's still 18 months to dig into the Sri Lankan cuisine and find those intestine-exploding dishes. :) The guys had a blast when they were examining all the mistakes I made eating by hand. I'll learn. In any case, they were amazed how much I actually knew about the country and its specialities already. Wattaka, by the way, is a dish and it also means "fat ass". :) Synonymous for that is "loku puka" (though that's not a dish). One day I start learning the more useful words. Till that I just dwell in my misery, knowing that my second name Pekka is quite close to pakka (It's up to you to find out what it means).
posted by Tomi Astikainen @ Thursday, July 20, 2006
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