She is off to India...

Zoë visited me for a bit before she left for India today. During her stay we did the usual: cook awesome food, drink a lot of coffee, sauna, wander, and she even painted on some of my ceramics (coming soon.) Below is the night we made Japanese food, it was amazing, and the third setting was for our friend Anthony. 

 

We had to go to a few favorite places, including the Yellow Deli. You should see their awesome bus and ship!

 

And the Autumn Cafe...

Jenna dyed Zoë's hair, and a pakistani girl at school thought she was indian when she wore her salwar kameez.

We drank tea by the lake while we waited for the sauna to get hot.

 

And now she is off to India...

You can follow Zoë's adventures on her blog.

Zoë's Cook Book

 

Shrines

I have been exploring various types of shrines throughout Bailey. Below is part of Anthony's shrine.

My friend Elliot, currently traveling in India, met up with my friend Shannon and gave her a shirt that did not fit him. Check out the fabric. This is almost Mr. Murray level, and with my ceramics class I have this eery feeling of being doomed to become like him.

This is my shrine. Although this photo is blurry I really like it. I acquired two more figures as a gift from Shannon. The closest is a mysterious Buddha that seems to be in a burmese style. Then there is my Buddha in the center, and in the distance is the other gift from Shannon, a giant Ganesh figure.

(Parachute Woman)

the bird hospital

while in new delhi, zoë and i went to a jain temple. it was a very mellow time of day for the temple, so there were few visitors, and i even managed to sneak some pictures of the shines. like most temples, you have to enter barefoot, and the floor was covered in rice and other offerings like flowers, an interesting sensation for your feet on the marble floor.

next to the jain temple was what really attracted zoë and me to the area: a bird hospital. people from all over new delhi, and i am guessing especially those who attend this temple, bring birds of all kinds to this hospital for treatment. they also accept rabbits. there was a mural in the hospital of all the ways birds are injured including kites, fans, cats, and dogs.






it was hard to take happy photos here.

on the border of pakistan

when i read about it in lonely planet i didn't believe it. as you may know, india shares the border with pakistan, and from my small understanding of india i know that the two countries do not like each other at all. during the cricket game between the two countries i swear india just stopped because everyone was watching. i was told that if pakistan lost, which they did, the team could not return to their country, and also that some of the team members and the coach of india got a raise from the government.

during our stay in amritsar we were roughly a half hour from pakistan, and for 100 rupees (you should pay about 80,) you can go see the border. but this is unlike most of the border, which contains mostly barbed wire and i bet land mines. here at this spot near amritsar, there is a stadium looming over the line.

when our van arrived, we walked about 300 yards down a road and got patted down by the military, and i was personally asked a few questions. then we ventured another 100 yards or so to the stadium where we were patted down a second time in a line just for foreigners. we got a awesome kulfi there too.

we climbed into the stadium with 2000 or so indians who were already going crazy. the military began playing music, and people (all women except for one 12 year old boy!) jumped out of the stadium into the road that leads to pakistan.

across the road here in the white stands are the pakistani people. they were not nearly as many and they certianly did not seem as enthusiastic as the indians.

suddenly they threw the gate open on either side:

then there was a lot of yelling, marching, cheering, and music. on either side of the border they did a similar show of aggressive marching and yelling. as it progressed they became sycronized.

 

basically about six guards on either side marched and almost danced as aggressively as possible. i will post a video of it later. then finally, at the very end, they lowered the flags, there was a hand shake, and they threw the gates shut.

last day in dharamsala

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

dharamsala coming to a close

my stay in dharamsala is coming to a close with only 4 days left --since we leave early in the morning of the 12th. i finally got some photos onto my flickr which took a little too long. i was too lazy to blog earlier today but since i had some time open up i thought why not. so i went to the nearest internet place after a massive coffee and sat down next to a monk watching youtube.

we have been hanging out with our monk friend which has been very enjoyable. we discuss the 16-20 types of emptiness, zombies, tibetan culture, pretty much everything.

he has us over for breakfast almost everyday! we are very grateful and it is the best way to start a day! one day we had tsampa, a popular traditional food. it is simply butter tea and roasted barley flower with dried yak cheese. the taste is a cross between play-dough and cheerios. it is served like the image below. first you blow on the tea to push back the layer of oil then you sip the tea.

next you mix it together to get that play-dough look, mine was a bit dry because i drank too much of the tea:

our monk friend said tibetans never feel full after breakfast unless they have tsampa. also from another source i heard that monks often have a ball of tsampa up the sleeve of their robe, no magic here!

my poor crashed mac! it is a big question mark. i hope i can get it fixed. no matter the combination of keys i press when i start it up i always get the image below. it is so silly to bring a mac to india! most of the indians have never seen a mac before and they are hard to fix. i should have some luck at the apple store in hong kong or new delhi, till then i will have fairly staggered post.

so where is ms. zoe high? she is taking a 2 day, 10 recipe, north indian cooking class. i cannot wait till she tries some of the recipes on here own, our monk friend cannot wait either as he lets us borrow his kitchen. we did try a little bit of indian cooking last night, we tried out making kitcheri which turned out well. our monk friend had his cousin over and we all enjoyed the food!

also every night when we walk back we pass this insect (about two or three inches long) with two green glowing eyes.... sometimes i get caught in cobwebs and once i felt a spider run across my head, i swear it is only scary when you can't see anything. also the spiders are big here, tea saucer size, sometimes larger.

we are also trying to take chinese but it is proving to be difficult. we tried to take a class at the lha center but it was in tibetan (of coarse!). we had a friend who taught us for a day, but then he left. we are also waiting to hear back from one person. for now we are on our own. believe it or not chinese, minus the tones, is easier to learn than english. so, it is chapter one, making friends, watch out china!

one day we went with mel and jay to norbalinka, a monestary about 30 minutes from us. what a beautiful place! they had a giant temple and water running through the many gutters and streams. they make beautiful tibetan crafts, such as buddha figures and clothes. one small buddha figure can take a 3 months to make. some buddha figures easily go for $3500 or more. i wanted to get an incense box but they started at $25 so i got a nice one in dharmasala for $3!

about a week or two ago we finally did the path that encircles the dalai lamas temple/house. it is a really great walk with endless prayer wheels, prayer flags, shrines, and meditation areas. in lhasa in tibet there is a simalar path around the potala palace although it is several miles, while this path is less than 1.

and last the amazing zoe.