On October 16th we were greeted by rain, very warm rain. Everything else was as always: the warm welcome by our friends, combined with a lot of food; the checkpoints and the road blocks; the traffic jams and the sound level of a big town. And astoundingly enough, we got used to the slow pace of everything within half a day.
Also, the contrasts: there was this fat little child celebrating a birthday at a five star hotel with a lot of other fat children. Along with a huge buffet, there was a hot dog stall, a popcorn machine, an ice cream vendor, an inflated castle to jump around and an animator that had problems to predominate over the live band. Hardly 500 meters away from the hotel in front of shabby shacks, built almost on top of rail road tracks, there were children which most probably did not know their date of birth at all.
You also get used to that very fast and one can only love Sri Lanka after giving up all ideas about wanting to change the world; and learn to be content with the possibility to make a difference for a handful of people.