HH the DL and others

Hey all!
So yesterday we saw a teaching by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It was very interesting. We had radios with an english translation, but it was very difficult to understand what he was talking about. Also the teachings were requested by a large group of Koreans, so the Dalai Lama would talk for 20 minutes and then a woman would translate in Korean over the loudspeaker for almost half an hour, concurrently with the english translation. So it was kind of difficult to figure out what was going on. It was cool, worth experiencing, but I didn't go back for the afternoon teachings and probably won't go to any more this week.. Unfortunately an audience is most likely not going to happen, though we will be hearing from Geshe Lhakdor, the previous translator of His Holiness.

Carrom board is fun! Its a square board with 4 holes in the corners. In the middle you start with 9 black pieces, 9 white pieces, and an orange one. All the pieces are kind of like checkers, but a little heavier. Then you have a striker which is bigger and heavier than the others. You play by flicking the striker at the other pieces. It can be played by 2 or 4 people, and each person or team of 2 is white or black, and you try to get all of your 9 pieces and then the orange one in to the holes before the other team. Its very tricky but really fun. The board we played on was home made out of plywood. Around the edge is a lip so the striker can be bounced off in order to hit the other pieces.

Hmm Tibetan food... There isn't much food in Dharamsala that is originally ethnically Tibetan. The only ones are Tibetan butter tea (what it sounds like, melted butter and milk with some tea and salt.) and tsampa. Tsampa is barley flour. Its high in fiber and protein, and they eat it by pouring some in a bowl and then pouring tea on it a little at a time. You eat with your hands. Its pretty good if you add some sugar. Other Tibetan foods are momos, which are basically dumplings. They are usually steamed, though can be fried. And are stuffed with veggies, potatoes, or meat. We also eat tingmo, which is steamed bread twisted in a knot. At my house we eat a lot of rice and veggies and dal. Another thing we eat a ton of at my house is pale (pronounced pa-LAY), which is flat bread. My amala makes a bunch of dough in the morning and then we cook it all day. You rip off a chunk and flatten it on both sides into a circle, then put it on a hot pan for a short time, and it gets warm and tasty. And last but not least that everyone drinks a ridiculous amount of is tea. Most Tibetans here only drink butter tea in the morning. But everyone drinks milk tea all the time, like almost 10 cups a day. Its just black tea with milk and sugar in it. I drink plain black tea generally, because I don't want to eat that much milk, but I do sometimes. Even that I have 10 times a day. Mmmmmmmm

We are in our last days in Dharamsala, I wish I could say it was winding down, but we have a ton of work to do... interviewing people for a paper, writing postcards in tibetan, and our finals coming up too.

woohoo!
SAM

ps, I slept on the roof of my house last night. Its 10:20 am here right now, and 12:50 am on the east coast.