The Martin's Blog

Looking East just before Sunrise

Villager ready to search the reef

Helen – Where did January go???  This weekend is another holiday (imagine that) so we don’t have school on Monday.  This is a cleaning day again…I am trying to do a little several times a week.  Today I took down the mosquito net from above our bed to wash it…the top was really gross so I guess I will gradually wash the ones from the other bedrooms as well.  The tops of the cabinets and cupboards also needed some washing. I need to spread this out because otherwise I won’t have anything to do!!

Tom – Big problem today is that my cell phone and charger are missing.  I believe they were taken from our house when I was charging the phone in the front unused bedroom over night but nothing else seems to be missing – BIG mystery!  One of the windows in that room was open.

I spent an extra hour this afternoon in the weight room with workers directing them on the relocation of equipment for my student/athlete class.  I changed the order, distribution and location of the various stations trying to come up with the most efficient use pattern for a large number of participants – attendance has varied from 25-30 including two faculty and an MD from town.  I am really enjoying my three hour class, three days per week with the five to six PE Faculty.  Two of them have trouble with English but the other four are extremely attentive and ask excellent questions.  What a change from my classes at Wittenberg!  In fact it is going so well, today I committed to spending an additional three weeks here before going back to Colombo.  When I announced this to my classes, everyone clapped and cheered!

Helen – Tom searched for his cell phone everywhere and then we finally decided that it must have been stolen…there are lots of people using our road (which runs along our concrete fence) to get to the beach from the nearby hotels and smaller renting establishments plus all the people who live in the area.  Did one of them come into our home while we were walking or on the beach…we had been very good about locking windows and doors when we were gone from the house, but a little lax while on the premises?

Tom went into town to cancel his phone and did a little shopping.  I asked him to buy some calamari from the fish store…he did…totally intact!!  I had a lot of cleaning to do, pulling off the heads and washing out the black ink, then getting the spinney thing out from the inside, and finally peeling off the outer skin…I was doing this in the outside kitchen sink and in a few minutes I was surrounded by tons of flies…I was trying to swat them and my hands were full of squid!!  Tom heard me complaining and came to my rescue.  He swatted the flies with a hand towel while I finished cleaning them.  I breaded and fried them and they were delicious…a potato salad and green salad on the side was great.