Day 9: Second Day in Sri Lanka

Sunday, April 23, 2017

          This is the second day of being in Sri Lanka, and we are in Anuradhapura. We did all of our scavenges, which took a good amount of the morning. We did A LOT of walking, we climbed up to a temple called Mihintale, and we went to a lot of other temples. I walked barefoot quite a bit today, and it was so so so hot and humid. After we finished all of our scavenges for Anuradhapura, we took a 2 ½ hour bus to Polonnaruwa.
          We did all of our scavenges there and by that time it was mid afternoon. We did more walking, more temples, and we even saw an irrigation system. We took tuk tuks around Polonnaruwa, and one of the drivers was very nice. He let me drive his tuk tuk to one of the temples!! It was super fun, the only hard part was going on the wrong side of the street to pass people without being hit. That was a little scary, but it was still fun.
          After Polonnaruwa, we took a big taxi to Sigiriya. This taxi was really nice because it had AC!!! After the 1 ½ hour ride, we went to the Sigiriya Hotel, which was pretty nice. We knew it was fancy because they didn't have mosquito nets, they had a pool, spoke English, and it was expensive. There was only one big thing we had to do in Sigiriya; we had to climb through the lion claws and to the top of Lions Rock. It took us around 45 minutes to get up, and it was very nice and windy at the top. The wind helped cool down my shirt which was totally soaked in sweat. This was a pretty cool mountain to climb, and it didn't take as long as I thought it would, so it was definitely a well-earned scavenge. At the bottom of the mountain there were popsicles and traditional Sri Lankan hammer pants. I HAD to buy some because I got stopped at every temple because I didn't have long pants on, so I wore my towels all day.
          When we got back to the hotel we walked straight to the pool. Zoey and I got in the pool with our clothes on (which felt AMAZING) before the pool cleaner told us we had to have swimsuits. We sat and talked for a while, then we went to our rooms to shower before dinner.

Dinner was very nice, the food was delicious, and the mosquitoes also got a very nice dinner out of me throughout that whole time. After dinner we came back to the hotel room, washed our clothes (in the sink) and went to bed. Tomorrow is more exploring of Sri Lanka so until next time!! ;)

Daddy's View

when i was in high school my brother steve came back from college for spring break.  we were starving and only had like 8 dollars between us.  this was mid 80s when taco bell had "ten cent tacos," so we decided to have a contest to see if we could eat ourselves out of money.  

he "won," eating 27 tacos to my 24.  why have an absurd contest when we could have just eaten tacos? because of a basic, human instinct for competition.

i still remember the epic, gluttonous battle to this day.  were there other times i was a disgusting slob? yes, many times late at night in college.  but  i don't remember those.  THIS was a competition, a pitched battle... waged brutally, strategized cannily, and the experience and memory are welded into my memories.  

the element pf competition in GSH makes the experiences impossible to duplicate in any other setting.  

with GSH we have heretofore total strangers pre-screened to be competent, dispositionally appropriate, humans for this trip. we are operating under rules, with tasks, points, time and geography constraints, extreme physical demands, and a prize.  

the impact that this environment has is immeasurably *positive.*  it is not the competition itself - it is that the element of competition brings out effort and results that are impossible to achieve otherwise.  

for example:

this morning we left the motel at 6:30 to get to a sunrise hike to the top of mihintale temple.  1800 steps, barefoot.  the builders oriented the mountain stair climb to frame the sunrise with trees when going up the hill.  

then we hustled back to anaradhapura to see the sacred bo tree, grown from the sapling where buddha actually sat in india, and the largest stupa (half dome temple) in the country.

then we hopped a 2 hour bus ride to polonnaruwa, where buddhism and hinduism battled for monument supremacy over 1000 yrs. we sped thru the countryside on tuk tuks, watching elephants and dragon lizards and people play in the irrigation canals, while we joked wih the tuk tuk drivers.  sydney now knows how to drive a tuk tuk.

then we jumped a cab to sigiriya, the royal palace on top of a huge mesa in the middle of the forest.  this was incredibly cool.  some emperor sees this thing, a plateau hundreds/thousands of feet in the air, and thinks "i'm going to build my summer house up there." the "frescoes" decorating the site are numerous pictures of really out of anatomic proportion female bodies.  the emperor had to be a 14 year old boy.

all of this covered thousands of square kilometers. in one day. we were asleep by 9pm.  

here is the thing. my motivation level to do all of this... would absolutely not be what it was, under any circumstance i can conceive of... without the particular rules of the GSH competition.  

the lovely GSH founders (bill and pamela) had an intended "side benefit" of all the competition and tasks - real authentic experiences and learning.  for example, i can tell you what "tivanka" means and why, as it relates to buddhism.  i know how and why reservoir and irrigation systems exist and work in developing countries.  i can tell you why buddha's actual tooth was a pivotal artifact driving wars and empires in south asian history for 500 years.  

i know all of this and much more now... not because i am some culturally enlightened, self-motivated learning machine.  

i know this because i had to read a bunch of stuff and talk to a bunch of people to accomplish competition tasks efficiently and completely.  the knowledge *stuck* because it was valuable for me to score well.  

and that is the beauty of this.  the magic is that the tasks and situation and the rules are such that you *have* to learn through experience, interacting, and actually knowing real world information, not for a test, but b/c you need to apply it to walk/climb/ride somewhere to do something.

the odds are we will "lose" the competition, but in trying and losing we will be 1000x better in being the human beings we want to be in life.  

which is a better outcome than what happened after i ate 24 tacos with my brother.