home after 8 years!

august 2023, leg 1 of a month of travel – sri lanka

we signed off from work, jumped in an uber and got to the airport. i haven’t seen my parents in 2.5 years and my sri lankan relatives in 8 years so it’s fair to say im as excited as i am nervous. we had a little layover in qatar which was harder than i thought because dubai is roughly 45 minutes away and i so badly missed it. so to avoid myself from checking the map a million times and plotting on how to get to dubai and back in time for our connecting flight, we got our steps in at the airport, grabbed some food and prepped frank for meeting my entire family.

i don’t think i can describe the feeling of landing and first smelt the sri lankan airport. the years of getting excited at meeting a sri lankan or two in the uk or hearing a sri lankan phrase of a sri lankan walking past me in dubai was rewarded a thousand fold by a whole airport of sri lankans! it felt so great to be back with my people.

frank and my parents meeting went as well as it could’ve, even better was frank meeting my aunts and uncles. they adored him and i was glad because i adore them!

we were only there for 10 days, so priority was catching up with family, spending some time in the city and maybe fitting in a roadtrip where we could.

the first few days were spent eating my moms and aunts home cooked food. i have to give myself credit for training frank’s spice tolerance because the boy did good!

we went into the city (colombo) a couple times to get some clothes tailored that we needed for a big family dinner we were having over the weekend. mr frank bought a suit and ms loshani was getting her first ever saree made, you’ll get to see it in one of the next posts! we also had an unforgettable brunch at seed cafe in between the agendas.