Mike, I write emails straight from the heart, and you can probably tell from the friendly, chatty way I always talk. My spelling and grammar aren’t perfect, and that’s okay—I’m just trying to be myself. I used to have a golden retriever called Bingo, whom I really loved. I don’t love all country music, but I like Toby Keith’s “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” and in my mind you’re a real cowboy in the best way—calm, kind, brave and looking out for your team. I only just learned that Jimmy Carter’s full name is James Earl Carter Jr., which made me think of James Earl Jones and smile, because I like seeing those little connections in names and stories.

████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ My hope is that Julie and the US team can use things like clear travel advice, careful reviews and, when truly needed, firm but fair tools with Anura (AKD) and the NPP party, so Sri Lanka can move from a “grey list” feeling to a place that’s clearly seen as safe, trusted and full of good futures for everyone.