Last Few Days at the Monastery

Tomorrow I will be leaving the monastery to spend five days in the Kathmandu valley doing a little sightseeing that I postponed when I accepted the invitation to come to the monastery to help with conversational English.  After those five days I will take a one hour flight to Delhi, where I will spend four days resting and doing a little more sightseeing, before catching a flight back to the States on the afternoon of January 15th.

The past few days here at the monastery have been a flurry of activity.  Thursday was the Ladahki version of Tibetan New Years, called Losar, which is celebrated for three days.  It started out with a 5 AM, more of less, ceremony up the hill at the monastery Shrine Hall, which required getting up sometime after 4 AM in order to get there on time, and then climbing the same 200 plus steps I've talked about before in darkness.  Lots of extra people had arrived the day before, some of them senior monks, some new teachers and some family of the monks, so we had quite a crowd for meals.  The meals were particularly good, extra food is always a great way to celebrate here.  Other than the morning ceremony and another ceremony on Saturday the monks don't have any scheduled activities for the three days.  So, like at the picnic, there was lots of soccer, card playing, groups talking and laughing and some music and dancing in the snack bar, which was specially decorated for the occasion.  It has been a great end to my almost month and a half of living here.  

There are so many thoughts I have about the life here at the monastery but I'm going to have to wait a little until they all settle out in my mind before I write about them.  But for now, suffice it to say that it was a great learning experience for me, you'll have to ask my students if it was for them, and it allowed me to get outside for regular walks and those in turn led me to loose a bit of weight.  I know I could have traveled more and seen many more places and sights, but sometimes one can see and learn more just by standing still.

P.S.

Wednesday I went for a walk in the afternoon, this time by myself as Khenpo has left to visit an ailing Uncle in India, it was a beautiful day for a walk and for once I remembered my camera.  And, it turned out, it was an unusually clear day and I got some better snow mountain photos, which I include with this post.