Nothing to See Here

As I'm wont to opine, trips are more often made memorable by the odd, unplanned little moments as compared to the carefully scripted big events.  Our recent trip to India and Sri Lanka is great proof of that, and I'll do my best to get as many of them down on virtual paper before the chaos of our life kicks in again (on the bus ride back from Boston Cyndi and I were already talking about next spring's trip to Jordan - and Steve and I are already in intense planning for next year's expanded Zanzibar trip).

On our last day, before the true mad rush to get through the Mumbai airport (more on that later), we had a lovely, and pretty leisurely, drive around the coast on the way to Colombo.  We stopped at a beautiful old fort town (whose name I'll look up later today) for lunch.  As we were climbing back into the bus we saw an old man sitting next to a bucket with a cobra (yes, every westerners dream of the "exotic" east) - so it was laughably appropriate/inappropriate.  However, we were running behind so I didn't point it out to the students; that is, until the man came running down the hill carrying a python on his shoulders.  Obviously, there was no way that we were going to get out of town with a busload of college students when faced with the possibility of playing with a python. This is actually perfectly fine.  I tend to be very forgiving of the students when they want to play fast and loose with the schedule because, well, it is their trip, and as much as they may have loved India and Sri Lanka a very small percentage of them will ever make it back again.  So, we clambered back out of the bus and about half of the students got to handle the snake.  This also included some haggling on the part of our wonderful guides and myself and the man - and that will make a great budget item line for our Finance Department (who hate me, not surprisingly): snake handler - 1000 Sri Lankan rupees.

My friend Cyndi and the snake, and this picture quickly became a favorite meme in Aiken Hall, complete with the appropriate Britney Spears references.

Some old dude and the snake.  I was explaining to my students there as you grow older you go through definitive stages, one of them being that you realize one day that you look like your father; and then you realize that you look like you grandfather, and then finally you realized, to your horror, that you look like your dead grandfather.

Of all the students who went on the trip, Sally Tate Meacham is the one who may have been the most insanely drawn to India and especially Sri Lanka.  I was quite certain that she was going to slip off and disappear into the throng of people.  She, I know, will be back.

And somehow the college continues to let me lead students overseas . . .