Sri Lanka…

Since we are not going to make it home for Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday), we decided to treat ourselves to a little get away this past weekend.  Jon and I claim we are trying to get Leighton used to flying before our 17 hour flight home for Christmas… yes, you read that right… 17 F-ing hours with a baby on a plane, shoot me now… But really we wanted to put our feet up and relax on the beach somewhere.  Sri Lanka is only 4 hours away and we didn’t need any shots to go….  So, Sri Lanka or Bust it was!

Here are some pictures of our trip and a few things that we learned and witnessed;

Things take way longer to get to than you think they should.  We were told that they hotel was only 11 kilometers from the airport… turns out we were 11km from the main town… it took us almost two hours to get to our hotel!

We did a lot of swimming and relaxing.

We are going to have our hands full with this one in high school!

We visited the Pinnawela elephant orphanage… I have always loved elephants, but now I think they are my all-time favorites!  We showed up during bath time in the river…

Two of the little ones were getting in a fight and a momma walked over and broke it up with her trunk!

Leighton was totally into watching the elephants!

   

Lining up to get out of the water and head back to their home across the road…

They literally walk through town twice a day to bathe… 

Then we headed to Kandy to check out some gemstones and eat lunch.

I think the munchkin thought we were going to trade her for a gemstone!

We were supposed to go to a temple that housed one of Buddha’s teeth… but our driver suggested we head back because it was going to take some time. Little did we know…. 

It took a little over 2 hours to get to Kandy which was 109 kilometers from our hotel (67 miles) so we figured maybe 2 and a half or 3 since it was getting dark… WRONG!  It took, get this… 5 hours to get home… YES, FIVE!  Why you ask would it take 5 hours to go 67 miles… well, the entire way was a two lane road, shops on one side and a cliff on the other, no street lights, people walking on the side of the road, dogs sleeping on the shoulder, cows meandering along, little tuk tuks, 18 wheelers and no real traffic laws…. All of this made for a stressful 5 hours!  Actually, Leighton had her first ever total melt down… it took 6 months but it finally happened.  I thought several times that we were going to die in that car in Sri Lanka and y'all would all hear about it on GMA... "American couple and baby die when car drives over cliff avoiding cow!" 

Stores like these were along the road… for the entire 67 miles!

We also got to visit a tea plantation…  I don’t know if you can tell in this picture but three different women are trying to take Leighton from me… it was crazy.  The moment we walked up the stairs to enjoy a cup of tea, a tourist from India insisted on taking pictures of our little lady.  I have gotten pretty used to people trying to take L away from me and hold her or ask to take pictures of her, but this was at another level… I don’t get it either, I guess because she is a chubby white kid.  Jon has decided the reason that there is a population problem in Asia is because they are obsessed with babies! Anyways, Leighton and I recently had a talk about stranger danger and luckily she listened because every time one of the ladies tried to walk away with her in their arms she flipped out… nice work Laylay!

STRANGER DANGER!!!

Leighton also had a first on this trip… first time to touch the ocean and the Indian Ocean to boot! 

Jon and I decided that Sri Lanka is a mix between Mexico and India and we thoroughly enjoyed our trip there!  Now we start the countdown for our next trip…. TEXAS… HOME!!!  T minus 41 days!!!!

My favorite view of Austin!!!

Until Later…