Me Come You're Country

Folks we did it. It is been months in the making and a global effort but finally Alp has an American visa to get married to Ingrid with. It has been a tremendous adventure, from contemplating what kind of visa to apply for to trying to figure out where to apply from. It has been a rollercoaster ride with the most exciting and scary part at the end. The embassy here has been very nice especially the extraordinarily helpful head counsular officer Marc Williams. The last two weeks have been a bureaocratic wrestling match. My criminal record hadn't come from Turkey and we were thinking that it might be something we can swing considering I lived in America for the last seven years, but it turned out that we really needed that or they did. So I started the phone conversations with Turkey. At this point I should thank God for Skype. It was day after day of talking to the same man who told me he would help me from the first day and sounded so sincere yet managed to do so little for so long. With Eid (Muslim holiday, end of Ramadan) approaching, last week we had two and a half days to get that form out of them, he flip-flopped until Tuesday as to whether he could give it or not. It turned out that they had lost my form completly and not even the duplicate copy that was supposed to be in their records was there. Because of that he was telling me that he couldn't get it signed, he would have to stick his neck out and admit that they had lost it. Luckily for me the telegraph that came from our other extremely helpful attache Ahmet Bey at the Turkish embassy to the Foreign Ministry in Turkey changed his mind completely and against all policy he said send in whoever you are sending and we will give it. This happened the day before the Eid holiday was to start and the next day was only a half day. Then I did most stupid mistake that I could've done and mixed up the time difference and called my Dad's good friend Ozcan Oktu at 11 o'clock, an hour before closing. Miraculously he was at the man's office ten minutes to twelve and got the form, mailed it with UPS and viola! four days later it arrived. I must also thank Ozcan amca here for being so marvelously wonderful, for without him running this last lap, it wouldn't have happened. So now the plan B is scrapped, which involved changing many a flight and train reservations, getting extra visas, and worse possibly getting separated with Ingrid, we are on trak and hope to see you all before and after Thanksgiving; we will have a lot to give this year.
Alp

Yippee and zipididooda to all of you lovely people!
Unbelievably everything Alp has said is true. It has been such a long and arduous process of vicissitudes in feelings and plans that we are breathing a massive breath of relief. And now we can finally reveal to you all what we have been keeping from the blog- the ups and downs- because we had grown superstitious in this labriythine world of visas and didn't want to jinx anything. Ffffeww! And I get to marry the most wonderful thing Turkey has ever exported!

We have been mostly confined to Colombo because of waiting for papers, calling on embassies, going to appointments, and so on. But this weekend, we took out Helaena's Mazda and went inland for two and a half days. Unaccustomed to being in the front seat of a car with power brakes(the first time in over one year), I was feeling nauseated as we were making our way out of the city, into the densely populated suburbs that never seemed to end. The landscape was lush and green though, with many side-of-the-road stands selling corn, king coconuts, and inflatable animal toys. Our first tourist stop was the beautiful botantical gardens outside of Kandy, where we stood under a massive java fig tree that spread its arms out seemingly infinitely and provided shade and perches to numerous shyly kissing couples. Sri Lanka's green spaces seem to be dominated by young lovers, some of whom use umbrellas to shield themselves and their clandestine embraces from view, but who actively lock lips noticably far more than their Indian counterparts. I suppose we Westerners take for granted being in our twenties and being able to make out in our own houses. Then we went onto Kandy, the capitol of the hill country and Sri Lanka's second largest town, where we were sold tickets to a cultural dance performance by someone praying to the Buddha lakeside who managed to convince us jaded travellers that this was our lucky day to be in town to catch this marvellous performance!! and we had to go and see fire-eating dancers and 25 baby elephants! It was our first "cultural performance" in all our travels through many countries offering cultural performances and, though it was interesting, it certainly was a nightly gig. The next day we hopped in the car (which had diplomatic stickers and certainly made us look far more important than our fairly tattered appearances belied) and went north to Dambulla. We were completely perplexed when we could not find a place to eat lunch in either Dambulla or the next town over. Finally, we found some grub in an alley shop next to the bus station and decided to go to the Buddhist painted caves nearby. They were very nice... buddhas, buddhas, and more buddhas in several caves on top of a splendid hill that offered views of the thick vegetation blanketing the area. We spent the night in the next town over, Sirigiya, famous for its massive rock fortress. Our hotel was in a wild garden, where we saw a substantial rat snake writhed around a palm tree, and it proved to a quite a wildlife haven. There were little frogs in the toilet that got flushed down with the first push of the lever and most shockingly, a surprise swarm of thousands of winged flies that poured in to the room and gathered around the lone light bulb hanging from the ceiling, mating and worshipping the light in a mad, disconcerting push to pass on their seed. There were hundreds of wings littering the floor after just a few minutes and we escaped the room for a while to eat a magnificent dinner of Sri Lankan home cooking. The food here is lovely and somehow still exotic for its different use of coconut, cinnamon, and other indigenous spices than southern Indian cooking. The next morning, thankful for the lack of any other memorable interactions with animals, we went to the rock and were dismayed, indeed bummed, to find out the entrance fee was a $20 per person. We decided to abort our mission and boycott the double standard in pricing (Sri Lankans: 20 rupees, foreigners: 2000 rps.) and drove back to Colombo. All in one piece, we had our taste of the Sri Lanka at large that we were dreaming of seeing while waiting in embassy lobbies and happy to return to the comforts of the eleventh floor. Amen.
ingridaisahappygirl