Blue Bottle Japan!

Somewhere between Takadanobaba and Ueno Stations

(Dad pondering the subway map)

Tokyo is home to the most extensive rapid transit system in the world and it is INCREDIBLE. Every train is EXACTLY on time and the stations and trains are immaculately clean. Though Sri Lankan buses didn't share the immaculateness and packed in three or four times the capacity into the bus they were also always on time. So according to me, both Sri Lanka and Japan's public transportation systems have the San Francisco MUNI beat by a long shot. Get it together SF.

Tommy Box in Japan...and me toooo!

I'm with my Dad!! I left Sri Lanka last week and have been in Tokyo for a few days meeting with young organizers from the Japan Eco-League and the Japan Campus Climate Challenge (will tell you more later).

But last night Mister Tom Box showed up and now we are headed out to adventure around Japan! It felt so strange, after months of traveling alone, to be standing on the street corner looking onto the busy streets of Tokyo waiting for my Dad to pop up out of the subway. It was really fun to see him when he did pop up, but it was also strange. It was like this: Hello person who made me. Weird. Ah, my Dad is here. Cute. I love him. I look so much like him...shoot is that a good thing to look like a 65 year old man?! SO glad he made it safe. Dad's here. Wow me and my Dad are in Tokyo -- YAY!!

I will keep you posted on our travels and also be posting more from Sri Lanka. I was so sad to leave Sri Lanka last week. The past two months have most definitely been two of the best months of my life and I feel so grateful to all the incredible friends that took such good care of me there and shared their country with me. I am forever changed for the better! I cannot wait to go back and cannot wait to see the amazing things that the Sri Lanka Youth Climate Action Network does over the next few years.

Sleeping with Elephants/Elephants killed your parents?!

Meet Dinu. I met Dinu when him and his friends took me and some other tourists on a crazy jungle ride to chase elephants. I was a little nervous because I'm not so much of a wild life person and I was with all wild boys who were ready to push the limits!! But the second I met Dinu I felt safe, there was something very calming about him. We were standing in a tree house looking out for elephants and I asked him how he got into elephants. He looked at me and said, "My parents were killed by elephants." I could tell he was serious. He went onto explain that he grew up on a jungle road and one evening when his parents were walking to temple elephants killed them by picking them up with their trunks and throwing them into a ravine.

Flash forward two hours. I was standing in the middle of the jungle, my heart beating so fast as we watched a group of elephants move toward us. I looked at Dinu for reassurance. He looked at me and said quietly, "Don't worry, we are safe. We are being careful and they can sense we are respecting them. Stay here next to me and just don't surprise them. They won't hurt anyone." I flashed him a look like, are you CRAZY?!?! BOTH of your parents were killed by elephants!!!!!

He continued, "I know, I know, Let's just watch them naturally, be calm Heathie" (what a lot of Sri Lankans call me).

The elephants snuggled each other and made a low but very loud purring sounds, it was INTENSE to be that close. On the way home in the jeep I was trying to express myself about the experience, rather inarticulately - "They are SO big and weird, you could really see that they loved each other."

Dinu said, "I know, I know what you mean. I just want to sleep as close to them as possible. Some nights I drive my jeep into the jungle and go to sleep in the back. Packs of elephants just crowd outside the jeep pressing against it and knocking it- purring and squealing all night. I sleep good there."

You just gotta go with your crew

(more pics to come)

I think one of the best things about this trip for me has been the it has really forced me to expand my definition of who "my crew" is. A couple of days ago it became very clear to me how much my definition has changed in the past few weeks.

I am currently on a farm in Sri Lanka learning to build a house out of mud (it is called earthen building). I am part of a workshop that consists of twenty Sri Lankan men (17 to 60 years old), one Thai guy, two teachers (husband and wife - Jo from Thailand and Peggy from Colorado) and their 5 year old kid, Tan.

On the second day, after a hard day of building, me and some of the others went for a bath in the river. I stood on the river bank and watched the boys and men strip down to their tighty whities (actually mostly tighty bluies and tighty blackies) and dive in. I dove in only to eject three feet out of the water - "SOMETHING BIT MY FOOT!!" It didn't hurt, actually it felt kinda good, whatever it was, but it scared me SO bad!! One of the men swam over and let me know that it was just a fish and it was just eating at the wounds on my feet (of which there we MANY from mixing the mud with my bare feet). He told me it would help my wounds heal faster. I nodded but decided to just float on my back to avoid the situation - good or not.

As I laid there and looked down the river at the men unwrapping their bars of soap and lathering themselves and their laundry up I felt the strangest feeling...peacefulness. Heather Box in the middle of no where Sri Lanka, at dusk, swimming with eight stranger men, most of whom I couldn't communicate with, in a muddy river with biting fish. That is about half of my fears mixed into one setting. I mean, if I imagine myself coming across a group men alone in the middle of no where as it was getting dark I know my heart would pound and I would just think the worst thoughts and go in the opposite direction. (I have an irrational fear of groups of men I don't know - as many women do). But tonight as I looked upon a game of soap monster (man covered totally in soap minus his eyes, chasing one of the other guys) I realized that these guys, for this week, were my crew and I felt so safe and at ease.

I can only hope that I carry some of this home with me. Maybe, when I get home, if I just imagine the groups of guys on the streets of San Francisco and New York in their underwear playing soap monster I will feel more comfortable and at peace when walking down the streets alone.

Two decades later, I finally understand the Japanese tourists in San Francisco

I distinctly remember one summer day in 1989; I was gazing out the back seat window of mom's volvo station wagon on our way home from a day in San Francisco. I was caught in a thought as I watched the world pass us by: What the hell were all the Japanese tourists going to do with the photos they had taken of me that day? I was a tall, really skinny kid with bright white hair. When ever I came to San Francisco and came across a Japanese tour bus hordes of tourists, linked arm in arm, would point, wave shyly and giggle at me then they'd motion to my parents asking if they could snap a picture of me. Sometimes they would get in the photo with me. I didn't mind too much but never understood what they were going to do with the picture. Would they put it in their album, in a frame, were they making fun of me? As soon as I stepped off the plane in Sri Lanka I came full circle and understood them completely. I mean, the little kids are just so freaking cute, I can't help but ask their parents if I can take a photo. The only difference is if their parents are young or the kids are like twelve or above, I say to them with a accent after I take the photo: "Facebook?" If they nod I give them my pen and they write down their email and I post and tag them on Facebook. Sometimes I even friend them on Facebook. Maybe 20 years from now they will still be in touch with the weird tourist lady who was laughing and waving at them...wouldn't that be crazy?

Hi, I love you

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Kandy – feeling a little lonely after ten days of hanging out with people nonstop. But I guess loneliness is sorta what I set out for, coming on a three month trip alone. Sometimes you go on trips looking for love, but not this time. For me I guess I came looking for the limits of love. It’s like we are all born when and where we are born and that reality affects all of who we are forever. But is it not true that we could have all been born somewhere else to somebody elses parents and we would love and worry about them just as much as we do our own now? What does that mean about the random man sleeping on my shoulder on the bus? Technically if I was born into his family instead of my own he would be my brother? Because of that should I not worry about it and just let him sleep on my shoulder, or because I have never met him before should I not feel any love towards him and only worry about whether or not he will drool on me.

It’s a complicated question and I can’t say I am finding any answers - only more questions. Okay, so don’t we all love kids? Like when you see a kid, no matter the country they are from, the language they speak, the amount of money they have, don’t we all just feel like, you’re a precious little baby and want to snuggle with them? So my question is – what happens to that love when it is baby plus three or five decades? It’s like sometimes you get those flashes of understanding – like you will see a random man eating an ice cream and you heart just beats an extra beat because there is something so sweet about it. Or when you can’t help but pat somebody on the back who is crying even though you don’t know them and you know it will be awkward. That is that baby love I think, the we are all in this together love.

But then there is also that unexplainable type of connection that is way more than an extra beat of the heart or a pat on the back. It is like upon meeting someone, instantly, it’s like you always knew that person. A lot of my best friends, my friends for life, I felt that way when I met them. It’s like no process of trust or finding out “what they do” or “where they’re from,” it’s just like boom. Sometimes it can actually be pretty awkward because it’s a little embarrassing to be like – Hi, I love you. I remember the first time I spoke to Mimi on the phone, just a week or so after meeting her, I said to her upon hanging up – “Okay bye, talk to you later – I love you!” It was SO awkward. I quickly said, “Opps, sorry, I mean, I’m just used to saying that to my parents and boyfriend etc.” She really laughed and then so normally said, “Love you too, bye!” When I hung up I felt like I wanted to crawl under my bed, but I also just felt like - well…it is kinda true, I do sorta feel like I love her. It makes me nervous/embarrassed to just recall it, but it is also so sweet to feel that way about strangers.

Even though I have only been gone for three weeks I have felt like that twice, I think I have made two friends for life. Yesterday in the shower I was thinking about how fun it was going to be to have Vositha come to my wedding someday and later that day when we were racing around Colombo in a three wheeler she turned to me and pronounced, “I’ll be coming to your wedding someday,” and flashed a grin at me. I smiled back, felt a little shy and was like, “I thought about that this morning. You are totally coming.”

Later that day I was talking to my new friend Akmel who is the Sri Lankan version of my high school friend Achilles. He knows everything about Sri Lanka and was helping me make my travel plans. We got talking about his family and he was telling me about how all six of his brothers and sisters are married and his family is sort of waiting on him to get married but he wasn’t really ready to yet. I tried to tell him twenty five years old was way young to get married and not to worry about it. It was sorta quiet and he was like, “Maybe you can come to my wedding when it happens.” I sorta blushed and was like, “Okay – I TOTALLY want to! ” We both laughed, sorta embarrassed.

For someone with so many of my own issues about marriage, weddings that day just made me feel like the world was going to be okay no matter what. It just makes me think, if I can set out on a journey with six outfits and a journal to a tiny island in the Indian Ocean and three weeks later I've met two of those instant friends, what else is out there in this big world?