Little girl, trying to find adventures

by Daria Novichkova (Russia)

A leap into the unknown Sri Lanka

I tried to calm myself but I still didn’t understand where I should go. I was exhausted and devastated and I was totally alone. A lonely girl, 15 years old, in the middle of Sri-Lanka, but you can read it like ‘in the middle of nowhere’. I didn’t expect that to happen but here we go. In my mind there were only two words from a famous movie Forrest Gump “Shit happens”. Back to what happened. I always was the bravest one: trying to observe the world, talking with other people, skipping school for another chance to visit an interesting place. At that time when I was invited to go to Sri-Lanka to help wonderful turtles on the seashore, I didn’t know what to do on my winter vacation. The perspective of spending the rest of my life, sitting with my parents at the table with wine and sausages every New Year’s Eve, wasn’t really grateful for my young heart, so I decided to find an interesting and a free journey for myself and sent a few letters to various volunteer projects. And here we are, dear Sri-Lanka center help accepted my letter and I started packing my luggage with the hope of struggling some adventures and having fun near the ocean with little turtles all over my happy freckled face. When my plane landed and the man, sitting on the next chair, laughed: “Welcome to paradise”, I understood that everything would be awesome. I didn’t think about the difficulties and safety. I was alone and I was young. A short man was waiting for me near the airport and we waved each other at once. I was carrying a heavy suitcase and he helped me to pack my things into his old car. During the trip we were chatting: the man was from Colombo and really liked his life in Sri-Lanka. He also was really surprised when he learnt that I was only 15 years old. And then he added with his beautiful accent: “Don’t be afraid of locals, they are just great. They will be asking you if Sri-Lanka is good, that’s kinda funny. Ah, but be careful around the countryside during night-time: there are lots of snakes”. Oh-oh, I was really scared of snakes and other things like that. But then we came to the big house, in which I was going to live for the following 14 days. My new friend said goodbye and then disappeared in the dark. There were no other houses around ours and my room appeared to be really small. I brushed my teeth and then decided to sleep with my lucky teddy bear, a gift from my grandma. Spoiler: it didn’t help. In the middle of the night, I woke up from the noise which I heard from the outside. I was really scared as I lived on the ground floor and there was a big door-window without protecting boarders on it. So I came to the door, closed my eyes, then pulled back the curtain, opened my eyes and saw him: a huge varan, trying to enter my room. I screamed like I was a dying animal and then I jumped into my bad, grabbed a shoe and was waiting for the attack of this monster. But in next 20 minutes it was gone and I couldn’t make myself sleep. The next day it was Saturday, so I had a day-off in order to observe the beach and the town Bentota. I was alone, because the organizator was on a trip with tourists from Ukraine and I went to see the jungles (I know, I was totally insane, God knows why). I didn’t realize that the sun quickly went down and soon it became really dark. I went to the end of the road and cried. I didn’t know where to go and I was really stressed out. I cried and thought: “Well, shit happens, and what should I do next?”. Then I turned around (maybe, Forrest Gump helped me) and saw the lights. It was my house. “Thanks, God, I’m still alive. I will NOT die here. Whoo!”. I was 15 years old. I didn’t know the future.