tomorrow zoe and i will leave at 3:30 in the morning. we will climb the hill with our bags and catch a rickshaw down the mountain to catch a 5-o-clock bus to amritsar. we are both very excited to go as we have stayed in dharamsala for a little over 5 weeks.
i ask: what has dharamsala given me? the answer is a deeper understanding of buddhism, myself, grammar, leprosy, tibet, china, suffering, poverty, compassion, openness, emptiness, craziness, time, responsibility, money, the dalai lama, being nice, giving, replica western food, manual car transmissions, being possessed by evil spirits, zombies, tibetan art, bodhisattvas, hinduism, tibetan food, meditation, and tibetan medicine. there is a lot more but it is escaping me at the moment but if you put chai in twice between each of those words you will have a relative idea of how i spent my time here.
zoe has learned even more, add a whole new language to the list above plus north indian cooking. she is really great at hindi and she plans on pursuing it in college to an even greater level. academically speaking we have also acquired a ton of books from places like the picture bellow. we managed to let go of two of the books. half the weight of my bag is books and broken electronics, seriously.
i am also going to miss the dogs, i named a ton of them. we really adopted zipper (in the foreground) who comes running whenever she sees us. not to mention dorjee, my basic english student who progressed so much in the few weeks we taught him and our monk friend who has better grammar than myself.
i have a feeling there are going to be no or few monkeys in china, especially hong kong. as much as they can be a nuisance they were an exotic highlight of our day most of the time. they really like candy too, i saw a man tossing out rupee candy and they would go nuts for it. the babies are very cute too with their strange body proportions, like their giant feet!
good by dharamsala, but for now, i am so happy to go. next: the golden temple
i ask: what has dharamsala given me? the answer is a deeper understanding of buddhism, myself, grammar, leprosy, tibet, china, suffering, poverty, compassion, openness, emptiness, craziness, time, responsibility, money, the dalai lama, being nice, giving, replica western food, manual car transmissions, being possessed by evil spirits, zombies, tibetan art, bodhisattvas, hinduism, tibetan food, meditation, and tibetan medicine. there is a lot more but it is escaping me at the moment but if you put chai in twice between each of those words you will have a relative idea of how i spent my time here.
zoe has learned even more, add a whole new language to the list above plus north indian cooking. she is really great at hindi and she plans on pursuing it in college to an even greater level. academically speaking we have also acquired a ton of books from places like the picture bellow. we managed to let go of two of the books. half the weight of my bag is books and broken electronics, seriously.
i am also going to miss the dogs, i named a ton of them. we really adopted zipper (in the foreground) who comes running whenever she sees us. not to mention dorjee, my basic english student who progressed so much in the few weeks we taught him and our monk friend who has better grammar than myself.
i have a feeling there are going to be no or few monkeys in china, especially hong kong. as much as they can be a nuisance they were an exotic highlight of our day most of the time. they really like candy too, i saw a man tossing out rupee candy and they would go nuts for it. the babies are very cute too with their strange body proportions, like their giant feet!
good by dharamsala, but for now, i am so happy to go. next: the golden temple
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