Day 1

Everyone met at school at around 5:30 early in the morning, and we were off to the train station that will take us to Kandy. I slept in the train for the most part, so I don’t remember much, but I do remember at the beginning of the ride everyone was having fun with how much the train was shaking, almost like a roller coaster.

When we got to Kandy, we started off by walking to the “Temple of the Tooth”. I was first confused because I had no idea we were going to, and I thought we were supposed to get on our bus right away, but I soon realized we were in front of a temple. On our way into the temple, I forgot to wear long pants, so I almost lost my chance to go in, but thankfully the security let me borrow their green apron they had for people like me.

There were a lot of people in the temple because it was a peak time. I didn’t even know what I was seeing, but apparently, I was very lucky to see the tooth, which only opens once per day for a short period of time. It was a great experience to see all of what they’ve built, but it was also very crowded and hard to locate where I was going to, so I stuck to our teacher to save myself.

After the trip to the temple, one of the highlights of the day was ready for us, some nice hot pizza. Our ability to devour pizza may have been underestimated, but everyone had a fun time chatting and filling themselves up with a little game of telephone.

After lunch we got to our first hotel, Helgas Folly. To be honest, I found it quite creepy with all the dark themed paintings, but it was interesting to look around and take photos. Some people went to paint outside in the hotel’s dining area, but uh… I fell asleep and barely woke up before dinner. We played a game of murder at the end of the day(which I found quite complicated with so many people), and we were at last betrayed by one of our most beloved characters, rocky. I still remember Avi saying the lines with so much identity, “Me RocKy, Me sTRong”

Day 2

On day 2 we started off with going to create our own Batiks. I had lots of fun taking photos of the artists there, and also had fun making the batiks too. The challenging part about making batiks were that you have to be very careful and sensitive about how much wax you release at a time, and if it’s enough to cover your drawing or not. Surprisingly, I didn’t do too bad, except for the fact that upper half of the cat’s face that I drew kind of went away after wiping the wax out(I think I didn’t put enough wax). I also tried to engrave my parents’ names after mimicking a painting that my mom painted on the bottom of my batik, where I half successfully mimicked the painting, but my parents’ names turned into some random lines. I also bought a sarong with elephants on it, and it’s not really doing the function of a sarong, but it’s doing a great job as a decoration in our apartment.

After the batik experience, we visited the old home of an artist Laki Senanayake. We had lunch there, and sat around the hotel to sketch what we see, and take even more photos. I took a photo, and started to draw the photo I took aswell as the camera frame, and tried to connect the sketch inside the camera to the background I drew out side the camera frame… And uh, I can’t really say it looks like what I was trying to make it look like, but… I’ll give A for effort,

Our second place of stay was back and beyond. I’ve been here last WWW, and it was a great place, besides the fact that I had some trouble with the food there, but don’t worry because I was totally fine this time. Last time I was here I stayed in a tree house with 3 other DP1s, but this time I was lucky(?) enough to get a room for 2 people with a friend and have some chill chitchat time during the night, along with some other visitors.

Day 3

Personally my favorite day, on day 3 we went biking around Polonnaruwa. At first I was not quite sure of the idea of me biking, since the last time I rode a bicycle was around 2017 when I was on a biking trip with my family in Europe, and I ended up crashing into a parked car and never got on a bike ever since. When we actually started to start the ride, I figured myself out and started to enjoy the breeze while speeding downhill(not really speeding because I didn’t quite have the guts to actually go fast). I do feel bad for my friend, Dimath because I really just jammed into him once because my hands apparently forgot how to brake when there’s someone in front of them, but he ended up fine, although he also encountered a monkey that jumped on him and tried to steal his ice creams not too long after.

When returned to Back and Beyond, we met the cycling trip group waiting for us there. Everyone acted like we haven’t seen each other for a few decades, although it was really more of a few days, but it was never happier to see friends that you haven’t seen for a while, especially when you’re on a trip outside of your daily life territory.

At the end of the day, we made some art pieces with natural ingredients we found from the floor. I made a South Korean flag, using green and yellow leaves to represent the blue and red circle, and snapped sticks to represent the black lines in the corner of our flag. After the activity, it was another great time to just chill and relax, and get to know your friends(even more).

Day 4

On the early morning of day 4, we hiked up pidurangala. It was a piece of cake compared to what we hiked during the DP orientation and science trip, or maybe I’ve improved in such activities(which is not very likely, but I’d take the chance of thinking so). Good thing is that I didn’t hurt myself while hiking, which is what I usually do. When we reached the top, the view was very appreciable. We were there from before sunrise to after sunrise. Every second there is still stuck in my head, the dark sky that started show a slight hint of red, a yellow circle emerging from the horizon brightening around me, revealing the beautiful endless scene of breathing green forests along with smokes coming up from small villages(atleast I assume they are villages). I didn’t go too close to the edge of the rock, but it was still enjoyable enough just by staring around me from the center of the rock. Coming down the hike wasn’t too hard, if not easier than coming up, and that was the end of one of my best experiences of this trip.

After the hike we got on our way to Habarana. They greeted us with some nice sweet iced tea that had a scent of cinnamon. Our cabins were great, the first air conditioning we’ve had in our room in a while. It was great, no more sweating during sleep, and I can confidently say it was probably the best sleep I had there. Before it was too dark we all went to the pool and had some fun(resulting in some minor scratches but it was worth it), had some great dinner, had my first warm shower of the trip, and fainted to sleep.

Day 5

Final day of the trip, we woke up for a cooking class with the chef of the place we were staying in. The dish we participated in was I think a long bean & coconut curry(I’m not too sure). I’m quite good at chopping stuff as I’m the sous chef of our house(head chef = mother), so I showed of my knife handling, resulting on quite a lot of long beans shredded, which I very enjoyed. We also took turns scraping the coconut, and my lord some people are amazing at these things, I could barely hold the coconut properly while scraping, while these people were doing it in the speed of light.

After the cooking session, we had great breakfast with the dish we made and some other curries, then we packed and got on the bus back to school. The way back to school was quite fun as I’ve became more comfortable around the people that went on the trip with me.

Overall I’m quite disappointed that this was my last week without walls, but I don’t have any regrets because it feels like I’ve done a lot of things that I probably couldn’t have even heard of if I never left S.Korea for Sri Lanka, and I’ll forever engrave this memory in my heart.(you get it? heART of srilanka, so engraving it in my heart 🙂