Ben's Village

So we got on the bus and had one of the bumpiest rides I have ever been on! I must've hit my head on the ceiling of the bus 3 or 4 times, and that was while trying not to! 6 or so hours later we finally did make it. We were cold and miserable walking around the "downtown." But soon a tan Jeep Cherokee can cruising up and the driver was yelling my name. It was Ben! You can drive? Cool. So we loaded up and set out to his home. Being exhasted Ben fed us and showed us his house and then... we crashed. I took a 2 hour nap. But after that I felt great and was excited for the next three days. Which started early the next morning with a ritual the family does every Tibetan New Year with their semi-truck followed by a Groom from the nearby village coming to visit all of the bride's family before the actual wedding day.

The next few days included watching Ben's family's everyday life, eating lots of Yak dumplings and drinking walnut milk tea, visiting the local stupas, temples and monestaries and climbing a mountain. (with help from the family's Jeep of course :))

I am now in Chengdu waiting for my flight back to Lhasa and feel blessed to have been able to see what rural life for the Kham Tibetan looks like.

Chengdu

Well 24 hours away from loading up to head back to the rooftop. Yesterday Bethany and I rode a bus for 13 hours to get back to the big city of Chengdu famous for it's panda breeding center. My trip is ending with a good reminder of where I have been and what I am going back to. For the past week I have had the privilege of spending time with a friend in his hometown. His town, village would probably be more accurate, is perhaps what my city looked like a couple decades ago. His family was very hospitable and they all were constantly feeding and making sure I was comfortable. I was just blessed to be able to be there at all. The drive was long both ways, but the scenery was breathtaking. Trees, mountains, bamboo, i fell asleep and woke up in a postcard. However the coldness was not from a postcard.

On the way there we stopped in a city named Kanding. The only open restaurant was a fast food chicken place called Dicos, but that friend chicken never tasted so good. The hostel we stayed at had traditional Tibetan bed and was freezing, however they had electric blankets! So that made sleep very possible. The next morning at 6:30 we walked to the bus station to try and get a ticket. The ticket counter told us to wait and wait. And finally (about 2 mins before the bus was going to leave) they let me buy a ticket. I am not sure why I had to wait, or what the reason was, but when we both got on the bus we discovered we had the last two seats. And later we found out that the bus just started that morning. If we had come a day earlier we wouldn't hve been able to buy a ticket! Wow.

more to come...

February really? already?

So I haven't posted in forever. Usually this time of year I am not consistently by a computer. This is due to the holiday. Unlike the US and Canada winter is the long vacation while summer is the shorter one.

Tomorrow other then being Valentines day, will be Chinese New Year. It will also be Tibetan New Years. Quite a busy day if I say so myself. Tonight I find myself in a Bangkok hostel on my way back to China in a couple days. China town is about a 5 minute walk and I expecting little sleep tonight due to the fireworks and celebration.

Either way I wanted to write and say all is well and I am excited for a new semester on the rooftop. But for now I will try and take in all I can in Chinatown in Bangkok.

Hope all is well.