New Year 2007

Am starting to regret my decision to buy a car after the past few days! It definitely made getting to the village a lot easier, but having a car can be such a liability. Already there are some problems with it, although last night when we got home Dhanushka spoke to the guy we bought the car off - who's a mechanic - so hopefully he'll fix the problems. However, more worrying is that on the way back to Kandy yesterday we were involved in an accident and although there's not so much damage to the car I didn't have time to get insurance organised before we left last week, so I'm going to have to shell out to get the damage fixed.

We were about 15km out of Kandy, passing through a small town on the way back from the airport after having picked up Amar, when a three-wheeler pulled out of a side street right in front of me. I tried to brake, but ended up hitting the back of the three-wheeler. Sri Lankan drivers are overall fairly psychotic, but three-wheeler drivers are the worst and in this case it turned out the driver was a 19-year-old guy who didn't have a licence. I was furious - - particularly because he could have easily injured or even killed someone - and made him take us to speak to his father. The family obviously had very little money and I felt bad for them because the guy's father had just had an operation, but I wanted the guy to know that he couldn't go around driving like that and had to be much more careful.

The road from Colombo to Kandy is actually notorious - a combination of the heavy traffic and the psychotic driving. Not only did I have to watch out for vehicles in the middle of the road coming from the opposite direction I also had to look out for vehicles overtaking me on blind corners and expecting to pull in front of me if there was anyone coming the other way - complete madness!

It was great to see Dhanushka's family again, though, and driving to their place from Kandy last Friday was incident free. We left quite early, so there was very little traffic and we were at his village by 11, stopping only at a famous temple that I've always wanted to go to. Like last year I ate way too much, but I managed to avoid having too many sweet things this time. Everyone was very excited about the car and I had to drive Dhanushka's cousins around the village!

We left Sunday morning and drove to Negombo on the coast north of Colombo, near the airport. Dhanushka invited one of his cousins along as well as his cousin had never seen the sea before. Yesterday morning after an early morning walk along the beach we drove to the airport and picked up Amar, who flew in from Goa in India. It was quite strange driving to the airport, but was much easier than dealing with buses and actually without the car we would never have been able to visit Dhanushka's family and get to the airport - particularly not over New Year.

Am having a very lazy day at home today with Dhanushka's cousin and Amar. From tomorrow I have 3 days training to be an IELTS examiner before the new term begins on Saturday. I can't believe my break is over so quickly and in some ways I'm not looking forward to the coming term as I have a lot to do, both at work and organising things - including visas - for our trip to Europe in July.

Subha Aluth Avurudhdhak Weva - Happy New Year!