Travel Update

Our team arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka this morning. We will be spending the night here and traveling south to Galle tomorrow. That's where our team will be building houses for tsunami victims for the next three weeks.

I was amazed at how quick and easy customs was. I got from the airport entrance to my gate in less time than it takes for some US airports when I'm only flying domestically. Clearly India isn't as paranoid about security as America is. I realized as I was walking onto the plane that I dodged a major bullet in going through customs... one that I wouldn't have dodged in the US. I had totally forgotten to move my Swiss Army Knife from my backpack (carry on) to my checked luggage. I flew an international flight with a dull, two-inch blade in my possession!

Out of curiosity, does anyone remember what the US laws regarding such things were in the US prior to 9-11? Were knives allowed if they were smaller than a certain size?

There was one other problem our team had. Like all of us, Kristin's Indian visa is a tourist visa, which means she can only stay in the country for 180-days at a time. She had mistakenly thought that it was 6-months, and had been cutting it really close. She was in the couple of day range where she wouldn't have been breaking a 6-month rule, but was breaking the 180-day rule. Fortunately, after questioning her for about half an hour they decided that she was ok and chose not to deport her back to the US. I didn't get the impression that there would be any issues with her getting back into India either.