Against my better expectations, I now find myself… well, “acclimated” is the word that Kara uses. Apathy might be a better choice.

The heat still rolls on, as does the sweat, but the only deficit I can complain about is any heat induced decrease of productivity. So much for kissing corporate American goodbye. It is so hard to get anything done. Like a creature suffering from reverse-cold bold, I find myself most afternoons laying on the couch, leg over the arm, laptop in tow, pretending I’m effective.

It was about the time I thought the heat might not be a deterrent from living here that the engineers told me that these are the cool months.

These engineers, Amitha (ah-mee-tah) and Anjuna (an-june-ah) have, to put is accurately, taken curiosity at me. I think they like me, but I don’t think I can say for sure. They are, however, enjoying my delight at the daily cultural spatterings they toss in my direction. I, in turn, am teaching them slang. (We started with “geek.”)

Sri Lanka, much like India, is known for their spicy foods. The have such a broad range of food options, sweet to spicy, that it is an absolute delight for the taste buds, provided you have the pallet. Kara (may she not suffocate me at night), does not. One day the boys (as Kara refers to them) returned with lunch packets. With the boys’ permission, Kara encouraged me to try this mixture of meats, vegetables, rice and spices, all wrapped up in a thin piece of plastic, twisted at the top, and like everything else here, packaged in newspaper.

Sri Lankans have an interesting way of eating. Kara and I have had a hard time finding silverware for the house because no one here uses it. Instead, a common meal is based on rice, which is eaten with the hand. You will pick out some curry mixture, or spice, or whatever is on your plate, and mix it into the rice with your hand, always the right (you don’t want to know why). I have been informed that locals are constantly mixing their rice, balling it up to create perfect little bites with precise portions of their favorite flavors. The food is then grabbed into the fingers of a cupped hand, with the thumb curled and held at the back. One opens his mouth very wide, sticks his fingers in and then pushes the food into his mouth with his thumb. Confusing? I am a pretty messy eater.

I think Kara expected me to gringo-out in response to the lunch packets, and what she expected to be unmanageable heat. Sure, they were spicy, but a good spicy. Turning her trick back on her, and winning points with the boys, I teased her for her taste buds.

This has become an interesting game with the boys, as they both seek out increasingly spicy local dishes. Today they returned from an afternoon break with what I think they called wavee. These little rolls with a local green pepper cooked inside are traditionally served with a chili mash inside, and of course, wrapped in newspaper. They offered me a chili-free version before I took the spicier option.

Trying to recover from the boys’ disappointment at not having found something to best me, I asked, on a scale of one to ten, how hot this was for them. “Seven”, Amitha said. We all decided that Kara needed to try these as well.

At the end of the day I walked out with the boys to the wavee stand, across the street from the Buddha shrine. I paid for the food and the boys said good night, making me promise a full report of Kara’s reaction to the chili paste. As I started back down the road to home, I took a bite into my spicy local haven and for the first time since I arrived, it began to rain.