井底蛙看世界 - 深入斯里蘭卡的熱帶雨林

1/11/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 12

深入斯里蘭卡的熱帶雨林🌳🇱🇰🌳

We arranged another local tour today to the Sri Lanka Rainforest and waterfall.  It requires a little bit of hiking so we decided to wear our sneakers but when the tuktuk/tour leader saw us, he said we should wear flipflops, so we changed to flipflops.  After half an hour of tuktuk travel time, we arrived at a rural area and the leader led us into the wood and between bushes, then I know why we need flipflops cos we need to walk into the creeks and brooks to the other side.  After several crossing of water, we finally reached the waterfall.  I am so happy that it was not too difficult.  NOT! The most adventurous thing is that we are to climb up the rocks to the waterfall with flipflops and crocs?! 😨 I don’t know how I did it... but it was accomplished!

I don’t know if I will be doing it again.  In a country lacking of basic safety knowledge, their car have no safety belt and people ride on motorcycles some with no helmet, the turtle conservation coordinator work with open ended electric cables above open water, I wasn’t told that this trip requires climbing of rocks.  Going with people without knowing your physical limitation, they will not care whether you are capable either.  Trying to catch up with the team rather not my goal but to take care of the step right in front of me is crucial. I admired at the youth of the teenager and the 24 years young girl, they are swift in walk, climbing and so ready to swim in the hilltop pond in their bikini.  My thought is... no way I will submerge my body in that water, even with clothes on, who in the world know what will be in it?  And it turns out there are tiny little fishes to do the fish massage again and I saw water mosquitoes sliding on the water surface.  Another lady from The Netherlands in our group, who is maturer than I am, she is taking her 1st on-herself-journey to explore the world, as she is so contained the first half of her lives with family and kids. She does like a happy little girl goes on her first picnic trip. I really like talking with her and listen to her stories and life wisdom. And she dies gave the same feeling how she could have accomplished this rain forest hike. 🎊

Life is full of responsibility and the older we get the more are in our backpack, young people travel light, they have high adaptation to the environment and accommodate easily.  Learning to grasp the flexibility between the two is another wisdom.  I am so impressed with the Tonja, the Dutch lady, she learned that one of the three sisters helping staff here do not possess a Sri Lankan gem which her two sisters does, as this stone represent good life, luck and health in their culture.  When we were at the mine which produce the unique Sri Lankan Blue MoonStones💎, she bought her a stone to complete her life. What a good deed Tonja is doing.  It is such a blessing to bless people with small gesture when this is just a minor cost to us, it means the whole world to a Sri Lankan. Bless her heart. 

有時候環境很不熟適，路徑也崎嶇，人人都只按著自己的步伐前進，孤身一人、沒有人在左右扶持，能把自己目前的一步站穩，學習少挑剔別人也不挑剔自己、按耐𥚃面的投訴，走到盡處就看見美麗的風景。神的創造使人心胸寬廣，自然也容得下別人的短處，更願意滿足別人的缺。人生的智慧，我們要走過多少個坎兒才懂？🧐

井底蛙看世界 - Turtle Bath

1/10/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 11

Turtle Bath 🐢🛁

We spent the entire yesterday and today afternoon giving the turtles a bath.  Lifting these humongous creatures really need lots of strength, for the smaller size one we were able to lift them out of the tank alone or cooperating with two, however Mal (the turtle center coordinator) will help us lift them out.  We thoroughly realized the Chinese saying “老鼠拉龜”, you have no where to grab a hand on. 🐭🐢The turtles need to be bathed once every 1-2 weeks, mainly to scrub the moss off their shell.  As most of their shell are damaged by fishing net and a turtle was injured by an insane guy using a wood chopping tool on a turtle shell intend to eat and drinking its blood thinking that will help with longevity. Another one having trouble to eat because a fishing hook got stuck in his throat.  Good news is, one of the turtle is mostly recovered the front flap issue caused by fishing net and should be ready to send back to the ocean next month. ☺️ Just by looking at the damaged shell already make me feel bad inside, touching it and feeling the crack with my fingers make me angry.  Poor animal, so beautiful and does no harm to human were seriously hurt because of our stupidity.😡 We are using very primitive tools to bathe the turtles, a piece of coconut shell, sand and water, using these natural ingredients, so organic and local by just what is available.  We continue to clean the tanks which require lots of labor, we all worked very hard to have the walls and floors of all tanks scrubbed and sand drain out.  The turtle project is about to complete, we will conclude the project by cleaning the beach and autographing the wall for memory.  Working at the turtle conservation center is hard labor, lifting, scrubbing, digging, cleaning, soaking in salty water everyday, including my own sweats.  I am very impressed by Mal for he is working non-stop during the year (no vacation, just off the weekend)to keep these turtles living with dignity and preserving them by keeping their offsprings strategically reproduce.

I will walk to the baby turtle tank everyday to start off the day just to see the swimming turtles like a black dancing flower will make my day and forgot all the labor. I prayerfully said in my heart that these newbies will live long(some live 20-30 years, some can live 300+ years) and stay strong in the sea! 🐢💪🏻

井底蛙看世界 - 原始粗礪美

1/9/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 10

原始粗礪美

或許斯里蘭卡並不是旅遊的第一選擇，在還沒有來之前我也懷疑自己是否會後悔。恐懼總讓人卻步，這一次，沒再多想孤注一擲就是斯里蘭卡。現在已覺，此行不枉。圖片放上網很美麗，風景也無懈可擊，人民生活簡樸，皮膚深棕色，衣著破舊，眼光深邃，他們認為我們是從地球另一方的天堂來的，我們來到看到他們的山明水秀認為這𥚃才是人間天堂。

今天上午我們自費出遊Madu River Safari，只是3500 rupees ($20usd)，專車接送（tuktuk)，包船遊、導遊、玉桂園和fish massage。河上風光，兩岸叢林，小船越過河上樹枝密佈的樹簾洞，船家關掉引擎，任由小船隨波漂流，鳥鳴不絕於耳，宛如走入株羅紀世界的場景。一路上看見巨型蜥蜴🦎、🐒、King Fisher和不知名的鳥兒，一隻鷹從空中急降獵食，上揚時鷹抓已捉住一條小魚。不自量力的海鷗居然想從鷹抓中搶過獵物，在空中一番爭鬥，最後當然不能成功。這一切的大自然現象隨處可見。

這裡沒有五星酒店、沒有冷氣、沒有米子蓮餐飲，每天要自行到屋外冷巷的溝渠旁用最快的速度洗衣服（因為很多蚊子和昆蟲和巨型蜥蜴），洗澡沒有熱水，一星期只有一餐用葷，沒有Wifi (但明顯我有data SIM card)，可是這裡的美是粗獷、不修飾的原始魔力，花草樹木沒有限制地在地面上怒長，禽鳥、走獸無拘束地翱翔，或許是最貼近上帝創造時的模樣。天、地、海、錦繡山河、一切最原始的創造，總帶給人安慰、教人謙卑，也讓人縱使看一萬次也永看不厭。願這片土地永續不被污染。

井底蛙看世界 - 回「龜」大海

1/8/2018 - Sri Lanka Day 9

回「龜」大海🐢

Second day of Turtle Project, all Turtle tanks at the Disabled Home need to be cleaned on Tuesday and the Conversation center tanks on Friday.  

Today is a special day!!! Because 105 eggs hatched overnight! We get to take them out of the sand nest and examine them before releasing them to the ocean. 105 baby turtles! They buried deep into the sand... we carefully scooped out the sand and when saw the tiny little flapping flaps, we will need to pay special attention not to hurt these little creatures and take them out from the sand as they are stacking on each other.  Just this morning we found 99 baby turtles and a few unhatched eggs and a few dead turtles.  What joy it is to be the ‘mid-wives’ of these beautiful animals. I pray that God will bless them all to survive and grow into big strong sea turtles when they are in the ocean.  Good news is after doing some examination, the manager said we are able to release partial of them tonight at sunset! Time is important as birds will be looking out for food when there are too much daylight. We all gone crazily happy for this exciting news!

After this joyous morning, here comes the dirty job... tank cleaning!!! First draining, scrubbing, scraping then refill with sea water... we seems doing a hard jobs but the real heavy lifting tasks is to connect the pipes from to ocean to the tanks and connect it with the water pump as well as electricity.  It is magic when the guy was doing it in front of our eyes.  I wonder how he can accomplish all these on his own. We spent the entire morning cleaned 5 tanks and 4 more in the afternoon, the center manager did the rest on his own in addition to the water pump. Only us 5 ladies, we achieved a lot and we are drop dead tired yet with a happy spirit. Brigitte is working especially hard to clean the tank, she is happy. ☺️I hope this experience will carry her a long way as to be a responsible, selfless and hard working individual. 

6:30pm, we get to release partial of the baby turtles into the Indian Ocean. It’s like a ceremony of joy, seeing them in shell buried in the sand, hatched, witnessing the first flap of movement, swimming like a dancing flowers in the pool of water then heading out to the boundless ocean... my heart is filled with joy, yet, anticipating a full of obstacles future they are heading out into.  That’s nature which we all need to accept the fact of reality. Each of us get to release 5-7 turtles, I asked God to bless these little creatures to live strong! 

What I’ve encountered today worth a lifetime memory.  As simple as that, joy derives from involving in life changing moments. 

井㡳蛙看世界 - 「龜」宿🐢

1/7/2019 -Sri Lanka Day 8

🐢「龜」宿

Finally we get to meet the ‘entree’ of this Sri Lanka trip - the Turtle🐢

After a long day travel from Kandy to Ambalangoda, I slept straight 12 hour in the simplest accommodation with just a ceiling fan with 5 of us in one room.  It is stuffy and hot, luckily the huge fan in the common area helped us cool down a lot while we gather.  Ambalangoda, city next to the ocean, lots of tourists come to surf at this untouched turquoise piece of water, the Indian Ocean.

The program manager gave us a brief orientation including safety and the purpose of the turtle conservation center. A 20 minute city tour for us to know the surroundings, where is the ATM, supermarket, ice-cream store and Internet cafe.  There are two turtle conservation sites, just 5 minute walk from our accommodation and our house us just a few meters from the ocean.  The Disabled Turtle Home and the Turtle Conservation Center. Then After lunch, we started working!

Our schedule everyday is different. We will start working at 9:30am at the turtle disabled home, consist of feeding and cleaning the tanks.  Today is Monday, we cut up 355 sardines, preparing them to feed the 26 disabled turtle and babies.  In the Disabled Turtle Center, they only kept turtles that are handicapped. Most of them lost their front limbs, one of them lost 3, I can’t stop my tears, poor animals, lost the ability to live but luckily got save by some fisherman and send them to this place.  A few other turtles always floating on top of water, as they can’t dive as they lost their limbs and they have swallowed too much plastic, this turtle hardly survive and under the great care of the turtle center manager.  My heart drowned to see them swim without limbs.  We are feeding them and putting the sardines right at a distance so they don’t need to dive or swim to get it.  If they are in the wild, they will be starved to death.  These turtle are beautiful and smart animals, for those that can dive, if they didn’t catch the sardines and got sink to the bottom of the tank, all we need to do is point to the sardines in the water, they will be able to dive down and eat it, most of those that can’t dive, we helped them to dive down by pushing them into the water and they are smart enough to pick up the food.

Each of these turtles are named and am still learning to remember their name.  

There is a hatchery which eggs are buried deep under the sand, some of the eggs are hatched and we get to see the babies pulled out from the sand nest.  These cute new babies will be released to the ocean after examination if they are born defective, they will be staying at the conservation. We are lucky that more babies will be hatched later this week. 

Tomorrow, we will learn to clean each of their tanks! 💪🏻

井㡳蛙看世界 - 海上的火車

1/6/2019 -Sri Lanka Day 7

Traveling on the train by the sea

海上的火車🚞

Woke up at 3:30am to catch the train going from Kandy to Ambalangoda for 5 hour, distance-wise it is not far however the train route goes up a little north then westward then comes done along the west coast line.  5:00am the train starts, we bought 2nd class ticket, we manage to get the luggages up in the luggage rail and seats, I was thinking it is not too bad as what I seen on Facebook how people sardined into the train, even standing at the open train door and top of the train. As the train goes on, stopped at various stations, people come in and out, until we arrived at Colombo, people really started to jumped on the train, our cart is full if people standing and sitting on the floor, as we were making a turn, I could see out the window that at each of the train door, some of them have 1/3 of their back outside the train door.  傳說中，歡樂滿東華式的火車載客情景，果真有其事！

When we reached the coastline, the train is literally run next to the ocean.  It got its name 海上的火車，which is also the inspiration Hayao Miyazaki got of the train in the Spirited Away animation. 

Such nice stunning scenery appeared in my eyes.  This bonus surprise is not what I expected on this trip. 

井底蛙看世界 - Watching Discover/National Geographic Channel Live

1/5/2019 - Sri

Lanka Day 6

Yala Safari

On a no planned program Saturday, a few of us decided to go to one of Sri Lanka’s safari. This is an extra program which we need to pay for our own spending. After inquiring about the price and time required, we hired a private taxi to pick us up at 10pm the night before for a 7 hour drive, wait and return. The ride in the car is like a Six Flag ride, wheeling through Sri Lankan mountain after mountain.  The 7 hour ride turns out to be 4 hour and we arrived 2:30am at Yala Safari, the south east of Sri Lanka and we slept in the car til 5:00am and hop on a Jeep who take us in the safari. Oh my.... this Jeep ride is really something... this Jeep driver is very aggressive and fierce. When his phone ring, it means they got information of where the animal appeared.  The thing about safari is that animals are appearing by chance. Luck is of an essence.  These 30/40 some Jeep drivers race to jammed into that little route where a leopard climbed up the tree for a quick nap, most of the time he drove off road to squeeze in for a better position.  We are bouncing up and down through the sand/mud road on the Jeep without any safety belt available to bucket up... talk about how dusty we are when we wipe our face and wash out clothes, mud-like!

First time safari visitor, we got to see a few elephants... walking right in front of our eyes, kicking it’s leg on the sand and his little buddy friend - a buddy, always accompanying him. 

The black-face monkey family, we can easily observed the hierarchy of the family where the leader stay at the edge of the road and directly the other family members to cross the road and the females carrying the babies and the leader go last.

We also get to see the buffalos bathing in the water to ease the 30 some Celsius heat.  There are quite a lot of peacocks, cranes, birds that I don’t even know the names are swirling in the air over us.  

Discovery/National Geographic channel is live in my eyes.  I thank God for His creation, the harmonic of nature among animals and human achieving in this place. Leave the jungle as home for the animal. 

井底蛙看世界 - 除袮以外

1/4/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 5

We mostly walked on bare foot today visiting two temples. A Buddha temple then a Hindu/Buddha temple. Why Buddha is worshipped with Hindu? As simple as that, convenient. Different culture people get married together with different religion, so it will be convenient to have the two confined in one temple. I don’t know how Buddha or the billions of Hindu gods feel but it’s a blasphemy for the one and only God I believe in.  I bet this is how Jehovah God felt when in the Old Testament, the Israelites did the same in God’s holy temple.  God have gave details instruction on how He should be worshipped, no exception.  When the world advocates convenience and universal believe, ‘The One True God’ declare exclusive faith. The moment I walked into these temple, the awareness of “I am a Christian. I belong to God.” is really strong. Amen, I am in the good hand of God and need not bring any flowers, fruits, nor money to plead for blessing. I am already blessed.

“除你以外，在天上我有誰呢？ 除你以外，在地上我也沒有所愛慕的。” 詩篇 73:25 

虛假的神多的是，真神只有一位。

And only Jesus loves His people, died and resurrected for our sin. He is Alpha and Omega. 

井底蛙看世界 - 行之無「道」

1/3/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 4

行之無「道」

Sri Lanka is mainly a vegetarian country.  We arrived on 12/31, for the past 4 days, only once we had meat in our meal. The ‘cooking mama’ at our accommodation cook us Sri Lankan food everyday. Spice is an unavoidable ingredients in Sri Lankan cooking. Our program leader, who is also our language teacher, tour guide, driver as well as cooking teacher. We spent the morning at the house to cook Sri Lankan food using different spices and that will be our lunch. It will be interesting to bring Sri Lankan cooking back to the states.  

Interestingly, the program arranged us to attend a Buddhism lesson host by a monk and a mediation afterward.  First time in my life listening to Buddhism teaching in English.  The monk is saying basic things like love, compassion, forgive and self control, nothing conflict my faith, she (I think the monk is a she with the bald head) even praised Jesus Christ as one of the selfless human being that reached a high level Buddha state of mind, yet, Buddhism never address the secured solution to save this life. 

Insight of the day... Buddha believe in Sri Lanka is not just worshipping a statue, surprisingly it’s a teaching of how to live in this chaotic world in peace and reduce disturbances in life by training the mind and body to desire less, so their next life may be able to ‘born into a better person’.  Christianity is more than that, addressing the original source of pain - sin, initiation of the salvation, practical example of a perfect man and the ultimate reachable home for all who believe. Yet, the disciplinary living and desire to pursuit  solely of their believe is what we lack.

Knowing my own faith and being able to grasp it securely is blessed. However, taking advantage of grace and lI’ve a segregated life is a curse.  Jesus, mercy me. 

井底蛙看世界 - Gems from the soil

1/2/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 3

泥土中的寶藏 Gems from the Soil

We’ve achieved a lot and personally it’s such a fruitful day for me. 

Since I am in the soap and skincare product making, I am as well into natural remedies, herbs, essential oils, spice...etc. Reading books about essential oils, aromatherapy and herbal healthcare.

Sri Lanka is known as an agricultural country.   Spice, rubber, coffee and tea are top world grower/supplier. The orientation week involved a day tour to visit the Spice and Tea garden, we get to see and learn from the local doctor about these gems from the soil.

I am especially fascinated by the spice garden. I have essential oils and spices at home in tiny little bottle sitting on my kitchen spice rack.  Today, I see most of them first time in their original form.  I am not a big fan of cinnamon but the aroma of the spice wood crumbled off the tree then into my palm, smells exceptionally soothing to my scent as compared to it on a cinnamon roll. As we walk along the spice garden corridor, sandalwood planted a few step away from the pepper tree, king coconut tree stand tall among all others, ripen bright orange yellow cocoa fruits hung on the tree which you won’t missed, then turmeric,aloe vera, nutmeg, ginger and numerous plants that I’ve never heard of which can cure lots of diseases and common health issues.  After many stops at different plants and explaining each of their functions, we were stops at a shaded patio setup with at least 25 different natural remedies derived from the plants in the garden. Each of us get to try them and received a massage with the oil on the neck, head and back followed by a face massage with the sandalwood oil cream. The only guy in our group get to tried the hair removal cream on his hairy leg with a spot shaved without blade.  The power of nature is amazing.

Tea garden is actually built on the hillside. Actually the entire Kandy is built on hills, I haven’t seen a structure built on flat land yet.

Sri Lanka is famous for its Ceylon tea, we get to see it from tea to cup by walking up the hill top led by the local dog🐶 (yes, dogs are everywhere in Kandy and they are owned by no one). This dog happened to choose the tea factory as its home and volunteered to escort us up where the tea trees are planted. 

Ranawana Royal Temple Kandy’s oldest temple, stood the tallest walking statue of Buddha and others small Buddha’. Worshippers need to covered ourselves, no shoulder and tight leggings permitted, nor hat and shoes allowed. As a respect to the culture, we all walk up the hills bare foot and it is quite a challenge and my sport watch recorded a record high that 52 floors climbed throughout the day.  Over 100 Buddha statues stood on the hill along the stair pathways up to the top where the tallest one located. Psalm 121 instantly sung in my mind, psalmist sees the gods/idols on the hill and wrote “我要向高山舉目，我的幫助從何而來，我的幫助從造天地的耶和華而來”. When the surroundings filled with 

unpromising hope, recognizing the true God solidified the collapsing circumstances. 

Insights: The one true God who created the world, who design every plants and human, which both originated from soil, draws between them a linkage.  According to 河馬教授（張文亮）human only knows a very small percentage of all the plant species and every plant has its curing power. A lot of fatal illness without a curing remedy today might have an answer in God’s creation right from the beginning, we just didn’t get to discover it yet. Human needs plants, for food as well as for medication reason, ironically doing a lots of harm to the earth, making it a bad place for it to prosper, extinguishing the source of antidote for our sickness. Sigh...我的心呀！謙卑吧！脫下腳上的鞋吧。We are created by Him and made with soil. Walk bare foot up the hill, plead the creator for forgiveness, He hold the curing power for our body and our inner spirit. HE IS EVERY QUESTIONS ANSWER.