Today is Saturday, which means a much needed holiday from classes. To celebrate, I meditated on the roof this morning. But while I was up there there was an EARTHQUAKE! It was just a baby earthquake but super awesome because I felt it so much more on the roof. Earthquakes are common here and in Tibet because of the tectonic plates and whatnot. That's how the Himalayas were formed, from India and the plate it's on crashing into Asia and the plate it's on. We just learned about it in Culture class. Anyawy, a bunch of us have decided to go into Upper Dharamsala, called Mcleod Ganj, to use internet and generally spend money.
Yesterday we went on a field trip to the Tibetan Library and museum in Mcleod Ganj. Ani-la's
brother is in town so she hitched a ride with us in the jeeps to meet him (pictured right: Ani-la, Lauren, Genny, and me). As it turns out, Ani-la is pretty much the most popular person on campus and definitely the most popular person in our little group of Americans. Everyone wants a piece of her. She turned the ride up to Upper Dharamsala into a nun-style dance party, which consisted of clapping and shaking our heads to the sounds of "who let the dogs out," which the driver thought we'd appreciate because it was in english......The Library was super interesting. The cura
tor had no problem unwrapping a 13th century text for us to take pictures of. Becky, who took a class on restoration at the Carlos Museum, was horrified. They really didn't have great restoration and conservation techniques, just a dehumidifier. The text pictured below is written in classical Tibetan on wood with actual gold and silver ink. Pretty freaking cool.Talking about Tibetan, I pretty much rock at it. Apparently, I've had a dormant skill for languages. I'd probably be better at it if I cared about it more... The thing about colloquial Tibetan and written/classical Tibetan is that they are almost completely different languages. So while I can read it and understand it, I find motivation for speaking it hard to come by, especially because all the Tibetans on campus want to practice their English. But Tibetan itself is a ridiculously cool language. When you learn a new language, you also get incite to how the native speakers think. So in Tibetan, the sentence structure is all about relationships between people and things and what is actually happening is secondary. "I have tea" becomes literally "I to me tea have." "My name is Stacey" becomes "My name Stacey is called." Tibetan also doesn't have the verb "to be." Instead, they use the literal term "exists." This alone makes Tibetan a great philosophical language. Something has to actually exist in order for it to be a legit sentence, or else you're lying or speaking hypothetically. So, "My house in is California" is actually "My house exists in California." Any other wording would make it false. If I were to come up with more examples, you'd see that Tibetan is a way to get a lot of information out of someone with very few key words. Its bizarre and SO cool.
In the afternoons a few of us have taken to playing volleyball with the students, monks, and teachers a-like. You'd think they'd be terrible, but there's some rea
l competition out on the court, even if the form is off and there is blatant disregard for the real rules. When a lot of people want to play there is a rule that once you mess up, you're out and someone takes your place in the rotation. It gets really heated when two people mess up and their reasons for staying in are ridiculous. One guy the other day said that he should stay in because the other guy who messed up had his shoe untied. Sometimes they resort to a form of rock, paper, scissors, but they have weird hand motions and use their knuckles and I don't understand it at all. My room overlooks the volleyball court and I snapped this picture earlier today of a team of monks getting in a good rally. The monks are the source of 90% of my entertainment.Anyway, I'm off to meet up with Ani-la and her brother for some "Italian food." I'll let you know how it goes...
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