Anuradhapura and Polonaruwa World Heritage Sites and Mihintale

Once I spent a wonderful day in New Jersey with my good friend Nicole and both of our grandmas. What could be even close to as wonderful as that? How about a day with 500 grandmas at a temple in Sri Lanka? The grandmothers were arriving all day long, and they planned to participate in a special ceremony at 4am. It was lovely to see. And hear, grandmas are quite chatty.

This is Dharmarathana. He is awesome.

At Mihintale, he invited us to watch the ordination ceremony of the new monks and then to eat lunch with them. There we also met many of the grandmothers who were at the temple for the blessing later that day. Avner became the photographer of the event. Dharmarathana has sepnt a lot of time in DC at the buddhist temple there. We are loking forward to having him for dinner when we return.

Thuparama Dagoba in Anuradhapura. It is "Th"uper!

This is the Buddha statue at Mihintale. The many temples and shines sit atop a rock high above the flat surrounding farmlands. When the rain pauses for a bit, the views are spectacular.

The ancients built many ponds and resevoirs.

We went to the heaven.

The moonstones are the welcome mats of the many Sri Lankan buddhist temples.

Corn on the cob!

Not as delicious as Jersey corn...

Lovely elephants on the base of the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba, the largest at Anuradhapura.

Grubby, happy travelers.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

We spent part of the day at Batu Caves. Avner was very sad to miss the the famous Thaipusam festival by just one day. Luckily, we still saw some people making the pilgrimage.

Visiting mosques makes Kate look like a babci.

Getting your toes nibbled by fish at the Central Market is hysterical.

The Year of the Rabbit!

(or for Truman, the Year of the "Bunny Ranch")

Petronas Towers are tall.

Sri Lanka: Kandy is Delicious.

We saw monkeys yesterday morning hanging out by Kandy lake. They were just running around and grooming one another. We also saw humongous bats in the trees, ick. The big groups of women in saris and cute little kids in crisp white uniforms on their way to school didn't pay them any attention. We however have plans to pick up monkey friends to bring home for Lian, Truman and Quinn.

We spent the day with an Austrailian named Ian that Avner met on couchsurfer. His room was taken so we couldn't stay with him, but he had the day off from work so he drove us around the mountain towns to look at some off the temples. It is so interesting to see the mix of religions in the temples. Sri Lanka is around 80% Buddhist, but there are many Hindu influences even right inside the temple rooms. There will be a huge central Buddha image with posters on Ganesh and Vishnu right alongside him. Also interesting is the use of bright flashing strings of "christmas" lights to decorate the shrines.

Ian has been teaching here in Kandy for four years and has a "membership" at a fancy hotel, so we took a dip in the pool in the afternoon. The bottom had gorgeous blue and white tiles, and it overlooked the river. I pretended I was in Hawaii. :P He also introduced us to the Sri Lankan food. Yum and HOT! You eat with your hand here, just the right one. Very interesting, but a bit tricky. Don't panic, I will not starve. Later that evening, we watched the sunset over the mountains at Ian's house. Just as the sky turned darker, a huge cloud of thousands of giant bats swooped past us through the valley. The just kept coming for fifteen minutes. Creepy and cool.

Today the monsoon rains came back. We are hoping to catch a bus up north later to the Cultural Triangle which is home to the ruins of the ancient cites. We will probably also eat a lot more delicious spicy food. :0

New Year's Day 2011 - San Francisco

We had a lovely New Year's day adventure with our beloved Nicole and her boyfriend Doug, who is now also beloved. They had plans to spend time with Doug's visiting family in Marin, and were kind enough to let us tag along. We started out up and over the steep streets of San Francisco and across a Golden Gate Bridge partially encased in fog. We stopped to welcome in the New Year with pints of Guinness at the Pelican Inn in Muir Beach. We wound northward through a landscape filled with countless brilliant shades of green to lunch with the Wallace family at the Farm House Restaurant in Olema. I had apple venison chili and Avner had some kick-ass mac and cheese. We made new friends and had great conversation. Afterward we took a drive out to the Point Reyes Light House with Doug's brother, niece, nephew and Spanish foreign exchange student. The sky was misty and gusty, but it didn't stop us from trekking down the 308 steps for a view of the smooth and glassy expanse of blue. We saw frolicking sea lions up against the rocks and strained our eyes for a peek at the grey whales. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a some white spurting spray and a suggestion of smooth massive backs. We are 99% sure they were whales. After a stairmaster work-out supposedly equal to 30 stories, we headed back to the Wallace home in Inverness and sat in front of the fire, drank Balvenie single malt scotch, ate Persimmon pudding (which was really cake because it was British), and snuggled their sweet dog Biggles while pretending he was Truman. January 1, 2011 was filled with great conversation, lush scenery, and warm fuzzy feelings all day long. It is going to be a great year.