Hello everyone!

WARNING: THIS IS A VERY LONG POST.

Devni here. And guess where I am right now… HELL YEAH SRI LANKA WOOTS <3 Back in my country, it feels so right, like I’ve got a missing piece wrenched away from me and got it fixed back in finally. But the bad part about going back home annually is that I get so homesick when I go back to my second home Singapore that I even cry in class when some random memory comes to me, and I can’t usually pay attention at school or anything. And I suddenly, randomly, out of the blue, start talking about something I did in Sri Lanka, just to remember I’m in the wrong place to be rambling about stuff that people around me don’t know about (like when I’m with my friends in school or out in the public). Sometimes my friends turn around to find my eyes wet and just roaming around, staring at nothing in particular. They freak out, and I’m literally alone for a week or so.

See? I’m already starting to ramble about my love for Sri Lanka.

But oh, how I admire and love this country. So this blog post, my very first one in AFF, will be to Sri Lanka and stuff I did in this beautiful island for the past seven or so days. But pardon the mess, cos I have so much to write and I don’t know where to start or when to start talking about another subject after the vast amount of info I’ve pushed into one part of the post. And there also might be a lot of digression. \o/

FIRST, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE IT CLEAR ACROSS TO YOU THAT SRI LANKA IS INDEED A COUNTRY BY ITSELF AND IT IS NOT, AND NEVER WAS, A PART OF INDIA OR ANY OTHER COUNTRY THAT IS PASSING THROUGH YOUR MIND RIGHT NOW. *points finger at you*

This trip wouldn’t have been possible without the organizing of the Sunday Dhamma School I go to (Buddhist, I am), because right now, in this period of time, our family is experiencing an economic crisis so bad we wouldn’t have been able to get tickets without joining the group trip that had been organized this year. The Sunday school I attend is called Sri Lankaramaya, and we students are mostly Sri Lankan, but of course, we welcome all races (Y). So anyway, the ExComm in Sri Lankaramaya paid for the students provided the attending parents pay their own ticket fare. So yeah, without this trip, we wouldn’t have been able to come back to my beautiful island \m/ -digression: there was Wifi in the third hotel!!! \m/-

Anyway, there are like 40 students altogether. I even have a crush on one of the boys *blushes*. I’m writing about him later *blows raspberries for no apparent reason*. We sing a lot, mostly Buddhist hymns, but also songs about mother and father, since Buddhism is one of the small amount of religions that place great emphasis about taking care of your parents and respecting them. So, this trip was kinda like a missionary (isn’t that Christian?) and concert-tour-like-thingum.

Soon I will be back in Singapore, but I shall enjoy the freedom and peace that is Sri Lanka for now, for like the remaining seven days. (I wrote this on the 17^th, btw, but there is no Wifi/ internet until we go to my aunt’s place or my uncle’s office or something. I might even be posting this after I get back to Singapore.)

So I hope you are aware at least slightly aware of the war that had been in Sri Lanka for a good quarter of a year. Maybe slightly less or more, but that’s that. You should know something about it, well, if you don’t, go brush up on your current news knowledge, babe. :P

I really get crazy at my friends who even breathe the starting of the sentence: “Isn’t Sri Lanka in India?” Well, they just end up wounded someway or another; mostly mentally, but, well.

But. Seriously. WTF. HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW? GEOGRAPHY CLASS, PEOPLE. AND NORMAL SENSE. AND ALSO COMMON KNOWLEDGE.

-digression: I brought my Mac along with me, and now iTunes is on shuffle, and I am venturing into paths I thought I’ll never go to. E.g. Epop. Cos currently I’m too obsessed with kpop to even care about English songs. My friends normally start screaming when I can’t recognize certain EPOP songs. Like, hello? Kpop, anyone?

Oh, hey! A-Yo came on! SHINee ftw <3-

Now I’m thinking whether anyone will even read this post.

Well, anyway, Sri Lanka might be the only country in the world with soooo many religious and archaeological remains that tell so much about this wonderful country. There are so many remains of palaces and traces of early Buddhism that you would never say that other countries can catch up to this historical country. If only people from school were here to see at least a district of Sri Lanka…

Well, that’s it; they will never want to leave.

And if you went to Nuwara Eliya, you would fall in love with the scenery and the mere coldness of the mountains. And, omg, don’t get me started on Trincomalee. It’s one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. And I can’t even finish the history of the palaces and archaeological marvels in Anuradhapura. Please, the history of just one pagoda might take up one hour to finish.

\m/

So anyway, I can’t talk about the whole trip, cos that would take up too much of your and my time, even though it is soooo worth it. I might even have to take up ten posts to finish these mere seven days. So this might just be a short summary.

The first day, epicness exploded straight in our faces.

WE SANG FOR THE FKING PRESIDENT OF SRI LANKA OMGOMGOMG CHILL DEVNI SHUT UP.

But OMG. \m/

Haha, we were scheduled to drink tea with the Prime Minister, but it turned out that he had too tight of a schedule. D: But even he came and listened to us, on the fifth day or so. \o/

A few epic stuff:

1. We sang for the President
2. We sang for the Prime Minister
3. We sang for the Major General
4. We sang for the whole Navy of Sri Lanka
5. We made the President cry
6. We made a singer cry
7. We rode on a Navy boat
8. We have the niece of the fourth in command of the Navy among us (sorry, the sentence phrasing is bad cos I’m seriously spazzing too much rn)
9. We changed in the Conference Room (the actual official Sri Lankan one!!!!!) in the President’s residence
10. We used (or mimicked using :P) the mikes in the Conference Room
11. We found lipstick on one of the mikes in the Conference Room LOL OMG.
12. In just fifteen minutes, we counted 730 something cows in the fields we passed on one of the bus rides.
13. We survived at least 4 5-hour bus rides. (I, myself, just stuck on my earpieces and tried to fall asleep :P) Omg, another one tomorrow; gotta charge my iPod for full blast!! :D
14. We went live on Sri Lankan tv, twice (the second one is tomorrow, the 18^th) :DDD
15. The boys saw me dancing D:
16. I got too emotional finding out my roots that I cried (under the pagoda Ruwanwelisaya). It was so beautiful…
17. We saw countless squirrels.
18. We got at least one frog in the last hotel room in the three nights we were there. (Did that make sense lol. Well, Sri Lanka is so big that we can’t stick to one hotel for the six days, so we went to four hotels. Bandaranaike hotel, Green Park hotel, Queen’s hotel, and I can’t remember the last one hmph. The last hotel was the one with the frogs. There were six frogs one night!!)
19. I fell in love with frogs \m/
20. I fell in and out of love. And in again. *sighs*
21. I stole headphones.
22. We got tangled in some rumors that were disturbing.
23. I got laughed at by the boys because I was the only one wearing full traditional attire for a midnight trip to one of the pagodas. (or rather, by my ex-crush, that jerk :P)
24. We got famous all throughout Sri Lanka and even got onto the news :DDDD

I seriously think my fingers will fall off if I type out more, cos this list will amount to more than a hundred items. I know cos I’ve already written one big list with my friends in the ‘crap book’ that we bought for the trip.

So, this is the part I write about my heartbreaking love journey I went on again.

So, I have a crush on one of my friends’ brother. He’s cute and stuff, and my second crush (there were so many minor crushes, but let’s not talk about them). I don’t know why I gave up my first crush, but I guess it’s because he turned out to be jerk (a cute jerk, that is). I’m not sure I’m over him yet too, and the main reason I got free of liking him (yeah, right) was because I found out one of my friends crushed on him, and I really treasure that friend, and I somehow think that I don’t stand a chance against her. I know what you’re thinking, what a stupid girl, but please pardon me, cos I’ve never been in a co-ed school except kindergarten, and seven+ years in a girls’ school can make you quite awkward towards boys. And, have I told you that I go seriously dumb and cat-got-my-tongue mode when the boy that I like appears?

So, let’s go back to the main point. *sighs*

I don’t know, but I feel like that same friend (who I gave up my previous crush for) is a flirt now. I can’t comprehend this, but it breaks my heart when I see her talking to my crush. I know this might be a common feeling of jealousy, but

I CAN’T FIGHT BACK.

I have no idea how to talk to a boy without going onto the wrong path of conversation. Hello, seven years of pure girls, ‘member?

And, I don’t know, I don’t know, I really can’t understand this. I mean, she’s the one I first told about my crush to, and there she goes and flirts with him. And right in front of me, too. And I can’t just go sever all ties with her too, cause she is nice to me, a very old friend of mine, and part of our small ‘clique’, so that’s that. I can’t do anything to make this right. And even he looks like he likes her back. He even smiles at her when they talk. I can’t make myself known, too, so I try to say small things like: “You should put your bag on the top so it won’t fall down,” or, “Can you pass me that knife?” (sorry, that might have frightened you. The explanation would be that we had a mass food give-away thingum and I was one of those cutting buns to make hamburgers.) So, on the last bus ride with him and her both, I couldn’t take it anymore, seeing her talking to him and laughing and all. He looked happy, he did. But I don’t know, I catch him looking at me sometimes.

But that was it; I couldn’t take it.My own friend flirting with my two-year crush.

I told myself to try to forget him, and finally be free. But there my heart has to go and make this all hard to do. I tried, I really did. But every time my head turned to his direction (it was harder since my brother was sitting next to him, and I had to keep tabs on thatsmall guy, to make sure his tiny eight-year-old frame didn’t fly out the window when the bus shook violently), my eyes would automatically, and horribly frustratingly, snap tohisface. And a couple of times, I caught his eyes on me, but we all know that it doesn’t mean anything, even though it could. But I will not go hoping, especially now that I’ve decided to end this once and for all.

But I just can’t do it. It’s way too hard to do it. And it doesn’t help that I’m seeing him tomorrow again (the group trip ended and we went our separate ways, to tour the rest of Sri Lanka ourselves, but we have another event tomorrow).

I hate this.

But since I started this nicely, I shall end the post on a joyful note :D

I’M HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY YAYAYAYAY.

:DDDD

Now excuse me while I go to a corner and think out these confusing feelings of mine.