Hunting the Hummingbird - by David C Hoffman

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Monday, September 5, 2016

A quick recap

Last night we returned to Kuwait after an eight day vacation in Sri Lanka.

We had an AMAZING time. 

I'm planning on blogging about the entire trip because I so want to remember our time on vacation in the years to come. So if you're not into hearing about every single day's minutiae, plan on checking back here next month sometime =). 

We just downloaded all the pictures and gah. I'm just so filled with wonder at all that we got to experience! I'll get to actual trip details - and pictures-  soon, but in the meantime, here are some overall thoughts on our travels:


- We left earllllly (like, 1:45am) on Sunday morning. I'd started doing laundry, picking up  pharmacy items, packing bags, and checking things off the lists on Thursday afternoon.   
We were laughing at how anal detailed I was being on Saturday evening, when David had yet to pack a single item. We decided to clock the totality of his packing time. Any guesses?
No?











13 minutes.

Yup. It took him 13 minutes to pack for the entire eight day vacation.

Mars and Venus, ya'll.



-  It's super fun to see the expression on an Arabic person's faces when you're an incredibly pale white person spouting out Arabic phrases in Asia.  I'd see a cute baby and say "Mashallah!" to them and they'd be all "whhhhaaattttt?" 


-  Spending the last year in Kuwait's crazy traffic and driving has totally desensitized me  - for better or worse -  to chaos on the roads.  In Sri Lanka, everywhere we went, it seemed like every driver was calm (ie, no road rage,) but everyone is honking to let people know they're creeping up on their right or left to pass them, and weaving in and out of the opposite direction's lane...and it all seemed totally normal. A family of four piled on one motorbike? Just your average Tuesday.



-  Sri Lankan's are cool people. Everywhere we went in that country, people seemed to give us genuine smiles, and truly desired to be helpful. Such a warm, welcoming place to be!



- While Kuwait has feral cats everywhere, Sri Lanka has feral dogs. ALL OVER. The ones we encountered seemed very friendly, and everyone seems to live in harmony with them roaming the streets. Also? All the dogs are pretty much the same size. No matter the color or breed, they're all medium height and on the thin side. We saw dogs all over in each different area of Sri Lanka we went, and nary a one of them was small or big. 




- I'm not proud of this, but I'm completely intolerant of the Indian/Sri Lankan 'head bobble". You know, where they answer a question with a kind of yes nod, kind of no head shake? I couldn't get on board with it. I was all "I'm sorry...so is that a yes? A no? WHICH ONE!!!!!!!!"




- Several different people commented to us that in Sri Lanka there are four main religions; Buddhism, Hindus, Muslims and Christians. And their follow up comment always was, "and we all live together in harmony!" Beautiful.



-  It wasn't just built up in our heads... pork bacon really is totally delicious, and we really do miss it.  Our family ate us some bacon on this trip! If you were to collect the cholesterol levels on any of us right now, they wouldn't be pretty. 




- Traveling Internationally with two six year olds is not without it's challenges...but our kids rocked it. Dave and I both were SO proud of them! They hung with some realllllly long days and overall did awesome. 


And lastly, there are few things better in this World than fresh pineapple in the morning. 

True story.

More to come!




2 comments:

  1. I am so happy to hear you had such an amazing time in Sri Lanka! Looking forward to reading all about it. :)

    ReplyDelete