Sunday evening here in Sri Lanka. It was cloudy day here, which was nice for a change. I really appreciated it because I was out of the house for most of the day. I went to a birthday gathering for my mentor's sister. It was her 50th and they had lots of people come over. Their family really reminded me of a Mexican family in that they have tons of cousins that do many different things. Very interesting how to very different cultures can have the same basic structure of family and concept of hardcore family ties. Very good stuff. I also met some very interesting people. There were not a whole heck of a lot of people my age. If they were my age, they were married. So I spent my time catching up with people older than myself (no big changes there) and finding out about them and their lives here in Sri Lanka. One guy left Sri Lanka with $10 in his pocket and took 7 months to hitchhike all the way to London. Quite a few of them work in banks. They were very interested in America and our whole trip. They take the view of us that those of us who are not blinded by rhetoric usually adopt. That being...the US should get out of people's business and mainly that we are on a power hungry, money hungry trip in our endeavors around the world. They strongly believe that the US uses its military might to get its way and intimidate around the globe and that we were in Iraq only for the oil. They were also disappointed that the people in our country are not up in arms with the things the government has been doing. Very insightful views.

So about the title of this article...no I did not find a mermaid.

I was talking with the night watchmen before I went to the gym and one of them told me Ocean Girl. You have Ocean Girl in the US. I looked at him with a puzzled look and wondered what he meant. He clarified that he meant Ocean like Sea and made motions like he was swimming. I guessed what he was trying to get at. Can you? We were talking generally about culture and media in the US. I will let you all know what it is in the next message.

So this is the last week my mentor will be here. I am going to be sad to see her go but it will be cool to run things my way. It will be quite an experience. This will be a test no doubt. We have 2 workshops tomorrow. I am co-facilitating 3 sessions tomorrow with SMEs from the NIE. Searching the Web, Blogs, and Hot Potatoes are on the menu. I am ready. I just have to review the PPTs I made and then go from there.

I found out about a cool technology today. Team Viewer is a really cool screen sharing application that does not even have to be installed to share desktops. I used it this afternoon to check that the guy at the lab we are using tomorrow had set things up correctly. Very cool stuff.

I have to tell you all about the most amazing thing I have eaten here so far. Out of all the amazing spicy and sweet dishes I have tried so far, the Kolikuttu by far is the most delicious and amazing thing I have tried. A Kolikuttu is basically a miniature banana. They are about 4 inches long. However, they are much better than regular bananas. They are sweeter and thus far I have found they have much longer shelf lives. For that matter, they can be refrigerated without turning brown and nasty. They are awesome. In fact, I am going to have one of them for dinner tonight.

Other than that, I have found that the King Coconut is the second most amazing thing. They do not look like regular Coconuts. They are about the size of a human head and they have smooth shells. They are also colored a light shade of orange. There are pictures of them in my set of the Blue Waters. They used to use the juice inside as IVs before there was such a thing. The juice is so nutritious that a person could live on the juice alone for a very long time. Crazy stuff. The juice is somewhat bland but it tastes good. However, it is not what one would call a typical or expected culinary experience.

Time for PPT reviews!