Relaxing in Colombo

Saturday, April 20

We woke up late and just relaxed a while, read and prayed and started in on our passover food that we'd brought with us. 

We went to Chabad again for lunch and met a guy who's girlfriend got appendicitis and was in the hospital so he came for lunch and to bring her some food.

The chabad family had friends visiting who live in Beer Sheva. It was cool learning their different stories and hearing a bit about their experiences. The family in Sri Lanka seemed to love it.  The wife has given birth twice in Israel and twice in Sri Lanka and is happy with both.  They bring in preschool teachers who board with them to teach the kids.  They sound really happy.

Their friends met at chabad in Mexico. The wife wasn't religious then, and didn't even know what chabad was, but she didn't like the Mexican food so someone told her that chabad had Israeli food.  She went and became curious about chabad and started learning and the two ended up back in Israel.  They want to start a chabad in another country but she doesn't want to leave her family, so they'll only do it if/when her family is ready to move with them.

It was a very enjoyable lunch, and then we went to see the Independence Hall.  It wasn't so far and the walk was really pretty.  It seemed to be a more upscale areas with homes with big yards and a cricket club where there was a practice going on.  We also passed a nice park where there were lots of couples sitting and cuddling.  We've noticed there's tons of PDA here. All the parks are full of couples and they're all over each other and it doesn't seem to matter how religious they are.  Some of the women are covered all except their eyes and they're still cuddling in public. It's a bit confusing for us.

Anyway Independence Hall was cool.
Unfortunately we couldn't go into the museum because it cost money and we don't use on chag or shabbat, but there was a structure on top that we went into that had a bunch of pictures. They were numbered so I decided it must be the story of the independence of Sri Lanka and made up a story to go with it.  Meir wasn't thrilled with my tendency to be short and concise. I think he would've preferred if I fleshed it out a bit.

From there we went back to the apartment. One of the reasons we chose this place was the pool and we hadn't yet taken advantage of it so now we did.  It was an amazingly beautiful rooftop pool. The weather was perfect and the water was warm.

A woman came up in a fancy dress with photographers and we're not sure if she was a bride or a model.

It was a perfect and much needed relaxing day.