Thursday, December 30, 2004

On a brighter note PICTURES

I have some pictures of my time spent in mirissa, before the camera was swept away
enjoy

http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/zigalbum/
I would like to also say THANK YOU TO TOBIAS for putting these pictures up for me
abracao ;)

also here's a good site for some info on what went on while i was down in mirissa, and by the way, the closest city near mirissa is matara, incase u were wondering and couldn't find out.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/12/27/tsunami041227.html
OH AND HAPPY NEW YEARS!!
I'm heading up to Adams peak tomorrow morning, where i will be climbing a 2200 m mountain, and will watch the sunrise for the new year and hang out with some monks, wish me good luck

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Isabel's tsunami story

December 26, 2004 8:40 am. I wake up just like any other morning, take my morning piss, put on my bathing suit and my dark blue sun dress. Brush my teeth with my orange flavoured tooth paste. Derek and I order the typical breakfast of 4 pieces of toast, ginger tea and we were planning to finish off our cheese that we had bought for christmas. Derek asked if i wanted to go for a walk on the beach before breakfast was ready but i decided I would prefer to lie down for a bit.
"Derek!!! you come here, Look look" I hear the owner of the guest house,Siri yelling.
9:15 am (10:15 pm on christmas day for you canadian folk )
"Isabel, shit come here!" says Derek after he takes a look, groggily i crawl my way out of bed, assuming they spotted another working elephant down the road.
As I look out side I see water about a foot deep creeping up the path towards the beach. "hmmm sewage over flowing that must suck" I thought. when I realizecd this water was rising fasting, and caring chairs and tables along with it, soon it entered the building.
"grab what you can and get out of here" derek instructs. Still thinking this will only be a slight inconvinience just getting everything wet not reaching past a few inches. But at the same time getting jittery and panicy. I quickly try to think of what i need dry the most. First I grab my Thesis paper (which i was a few hundred words away from finishing), god forbid my hours of work get wet, and my book i need to read,then on my way out i spot my cd player I grab that too, neglecting my passport and money completely for some reason (thank god you'll see why later).By the time I got to the front door, I was waste deep in water. "SHit this is much more seriouse than i thought" I grabbed a hold of Siri's Tuc-tuc (the three wheeled taxi) and realize that's being swept away with the water aswell. At this point everything got pretty blurry.I realized my thesis and cd player weren't that important when i saw Siri holding on to the shop's pole with his wife panicing and disapearing underwater.

I managed to some how get swept from just outside my guest house out through the gate, across the street, which is at least 10 meters away, I don't really remeber this. Then i tried to grab a hold to a telephone pole.I couldn't get a good grip, but thank god for derek he was holding onto me so I didn't go anywhere. Had i slipped away I would have been washed out into the river and possibly back into the ocean. Then the gushing water just stopped. I have no idea how long all this took, could have been a few seconds or a few minutes i don't know.
So having no idea what had just happened.I make my way back to the guest house everythign was destroyed and a refrigerator had been washed into my room. heading back to the guest house was probably the dumbest thing to do, cuz u never now, these things could have been followed by bigger stronger waves, but we were all in shock and wanted to make sure everyone was ok. We had lost the cook we couldn't find her for a long time, but turns out she was alright.

There was constant tention in the air.No body knew what we were just hit by, and there were constant rumors of more coming, about 15 minutes after the whole ordeal, I heard some one screaming in the distants and a mob of people tryign running downhill. Soenmone thought another one was coming, and i quickly tried to scramble outside the house as i did that i slippped and dislocated my shoulder, but soemwhere while i was running it popped itself back in, and now it's a lil soar, but not too bad. I also have a few cuts on my feet from trying to grip the concrete and a bruise on my leg but besides that I'm fine.

There were about 6 other scares. It was so tense because anytime U here anyone screaming, your afraid that another Tsunami is coming. I must have run dow hill away from the coast and up mountains about half a dozen times thanks to these scares.

Well I gto out of this EXTREMELY lucky, almost too lucky. I feel a bit guilty for all that I have, and nothign I can do
The only things i lost was my cd player, my thesis (figures!!!!) and the books i need to write my other paper. Derek's bag got swept away, but we are both in good health.
The night of the insident, we slept outsode on a mountain where there was a temple, with a few other people, and the night after we took refuge in the house of the pumber of the guest house which was half a km. from the beach. the next morning we caught a bus that was organized to take us to a refugee type of place for the ngiht, where we got a place to sleep and some food to eat.
It was interesting to meet other people and swap our stories, some peopel have soem amazing escape stories.
Some very sad stories. I also got a chance to watch some CNN, up till that moment i had no idea what it was i had just survived, and how extremely lucky i was, and am for that matter. Now I took a bus further up into the mountaims, back to Kandy (where i was first when i came to sri lanka)
I'm safe now, and hopefully disease won't be too big a problem.
Thanks to those of you who send me e-mails of concern, in a time l;iek this it really means a lot to me.
Hey and now i can add a new natural catastrophe to my list

Ice storm, montreal 1998
Hurricane Isidora Yucatan, mexico 2002
SARS Guanxi China 2003
Tsunami Mirisa, sri lanka 2004

hmm i wonder what's next


Saturday, December 18, 2004

Just an update

Okokok, I know a lot of you read my last blog and thought "WHAT?! Isabel's reading books?!?!?" Well before you make any comments about it, yes I am. Really there's nothing else to do then lie around and read books, and believe it or not, I'm really enjoying it, who would have thought.

Well today I got my ass on a bus and made my way to Colombo, the capital, to get a Visa extention for another 2 months. I'll probably be staying in sri lanka till somtime in the middle of january or begining of february. Then it turns out I can get a 70$ plane ride to India, why the hell not right?

That's that, sorry if I'm being half assed with my e-mails, just in mirissa, where I'm staying, it's hard to get access to a computer, but I'm trying.Oh and you know how i sent out an e-mail saying i can make this thing update you when Iupdate my blog, well it's not true
sorry, so you'll just ahve to check in every now and then.
well take care and stay warm
(oh and i got my pictures from cuba, if u want to see et me know, I'll snd them to ya)

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Sri Lanka

I left Bangkok around Nov 25th. We had a plane to Colombo, Sri lanka at 9:45 pm. It was a 3 and a half hour plane ride. We arrived at the airport at 11pm and didn't have a bus out to Kandy until 5 am. The bus station was extremely hectic, and the fact that I had as many bags as i did didn't help. So I slept through the entire ride pretty much, waking up every now and then by banging my head against the window. Sri lankans are the craziest drivers I've ever seen. I thought China was bad, these peopel are even worse!!! So Kandy is a nice little town in the center of Sri Lanka . People here compared to Asian are much nicer and down to earth. But that might be because most of them speak very good english. I stayed in a nice guest house there called Pinkhouse. Derek's stayed there for the past 5 years so he knows them well. Well the rooms there were shit. Every now and then you's here rats running across the ceiling, chirping of the lizards we had living in our room, and I had a cockroach living in my matress. The place had a really nice athmosphere though. The owner of the place was a really sweet lady and made exellent Dahl and Sambol mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The food in Sri Lanka is soooo good. Prety spicy and most things are ade with coconut and are curry based. Another great aspect about dining here is you eat everythign with your HANDS!!! I love it!

One of the things I like about the guest house was how everyone came would sit out front in the wicker chairs. It was nice because each person stayig there was from a different part of the world. At one point there wer people frpm Spain,Grece,Israel,Italy,England, Irland,New Zealand, and sri lanka of course. It was cool hearing the different accents al in the same conversation. Also it would be cool how every morning I would wake up to chanting monks, because of the Buddhist temple just down the street.
We didn't do too much in Kandy other than walk down the road past the lake to the bakery to get some "Short Eat" which is pretty much just pastries with some kind of meat or curry spicy type stuff in it.


Aftr 6 days in Kandy we decidedit was time to head south to the beach. It was just a 6 hour bus ride until we got to MIRISSA BEACH (which is where I'm stayig now). Again the guest house we are staying at is owned by someone Derek knows very well.So they gave us a nice room inside their house. Also we get the benefits of helping yurselves to the fridge and sneaking in while the cook is making supper for everyone and pickign at whatever we want to eat. Also we get free tuk-tuk rides if we need.

So my life for the past while consists of pretty much waking up around 8 am everymorning. Stepping out of the door onto the beach for a walk, eat breakfast, Lie on the beach, read a book or work on y thesis paper. Then it's lunch time, which is then followed by nap time. after nap time, it's tiem to bum around a bit, maybe read a bit more or o back to the beach for anoter walk until supper time. After supper time tere's nothing left to do other sit by the beach and have a few beers. And I must add that Sri Lanka makes an excellet STOUT beer.
This is pretty much te storry of my life unti after Christmas.

After Christmas I'm heading to the hills, and doing some walking. and stuff, nothing to excitng
I have some picture, and am in the process of tryign to put them up on a siter.
As i said before it's hard for me to access any good internet here.
Miss you all and hope to hear from you!!! and HAPPy HOLIDAYS!!!!