Jan 14: My brother Joe returned from his trip to Death Valley last Saturday. He’d gone out to California to join Terry in a little desert exploration, and I think they had a fun time. So far this week, I’ve been delighted to have the opportunity to spend three whole days in my young brother’s company. It fills up my Joe-box nicely.
Joe is a junior at Bowdoin College, and on January 25, he’s leaving for Sri Lanka for a semester abroad. I am so excited for him. I don’t think that statement adequately expresses my excitement. SO EXCITED.
Joe got his vaccinations this morning, and in the next week or so we’re going to shop for the final items he wants to take on his trip. Andrew has been really curious about what kinds of animals Uncle Joe will see while in Sri Lanka. We’ve been looking things up online. I love the Internet!
While looking up info on Sri Lanka, I found a blog written by a student who went on the ISLE program last semester. She wrote a blog called Culture Change, and so far it has given me a tantalizing sneak-peak into the experiences Joe may have over the next several months.
Joe is planning to blog about his experiences abroad. You can find him here: Platos Footnotes.
His first post on his travels is copied below. I really love travel…especially international travel…especially international travel that involves an immersion into the culture. Oh, Joe…I hope your experiences challenge and inspire you in wonderful ways.
I hope that a few more eyes flit over these and many words to come in the next few months. I will be going abroad to Sri Lanka for the next four months, from Jan 25th until May 18th and intend to use this blog as my primary way of keeping my friends and family informed. Most likely this space will be part summary of daily life and experiences, part sharing of pictures, and part reflection. My time on the internet will be limited to internet cafes, so I hope to update this blog about once a week and keep all of you that I care about abreast of my world since I won’t be able to individually. In fact, if you are reading this right now and want to communicate thoughts to me at all, the comments section is probably the best way to do it since, for internet use, this blog will be my primary concern. And I love comments, :-).
Things on *the* list to prepare for Sri Lanka include:
1) Read “When Memories Die” (which I’ve completed)
2) Learn the Sinhala alphabet
3) Read 5th century text on ancient Sri Lankan history
4) Peruse some travel guides
5) Shop and pack
Given that today is Jan. 10th (well, here it has recently become the 11th, but *somewhere* it’s the 10th), I have two weeks and a day to prepare for Sri Lanka. I think I’m up to the challenge.
On top of all that, I hope to apply to several internships in D.C. in hopes that I might get one (please, just one, that’s all I want) in the next few weeks.
Reactions to “When Memories Die”:
The book that I’ve read so far was a narrative that followed three generations of the same family, starting from about the 1920s until somewhere vaguely in the 1990s. It was a really great book and a perfect introduction to Sri Lanka (I think). If you don’t know anything about Sri Lankan history (as I didn’t), they were colonized by the British until 1948 and then have had a considerable amount of inner turmoil, culminating in a full civil war by the 1980s (that still goes
on today). From what I can tell, much of the civil war is around a racial problem between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority.
At some point (it was hard to tell when), Sinhala replaced English as the language of government and instruction, in the face of the Tamil and their language. The last 50 years seem to be mostly growing . animosity about which ethnic group came to Sri Lanka first and who was favored by the colonists, etc.It’s all really pretty depressing. It seems mostly to be blind racism that grew and showed itself through a difference of languages and geography. I’ll be learning Sinhala while in Sri Lanka, but I already resent that fact to some extent. It will be really interesting to find out more about the political situation from my host family, since news reports have the Tamils (which have been fighting for a country of their own in the North and East parts of the island) losing
the battle.That’s all for now, but I’ll try to update later a bit on the geography and where I’ll be staying and what I know about it thus far.