cihts is such a wonderfully weird place. sometimes it drives me crazy, but most of the time i love how bizarre things can be.

i was intending to write a really long post about one of my evenings last week, but i think it's enough to say this: the evening was spent watching a documentary film about muslim tibetans in ladakh who don't like speaking urdu, followed by the director, a tibetan man, singing and dancing to a song about the dalai lama in hindi. and then we had a sing-along.



and this was all perfectly normal.

on sunday i spent the day in varanasi.
i took a cycle rickshaw into the city, which took a long time, but i went with my favorite rickshaw-wallah (who all of the tibetans call 'bob marley' on account of his dark skin and long hair). i bought a sweater from the tibetan refugee market, and while i was there, i ran into the postmaster from the sarnath post office. after that, jojo and i went to arun's silk shop. arun is a friend of jay (the professor who brings students here every january), and he remembered us. we spent a good portion of the day with him and his family, flying kites on the roof. when we tried to haggle with an autorickshaw-wallah to get back to sarnath, we ran into a friend from the hostel who lives a few doors down from jojo, so we shared a ride back with her.

sometimes i want to wander through sarnath singing the theme song to cheers... "where everybody knows your name." granted, most people around here don't know my or jojo's name - they just know us as those two white girls who go to the tibetan institute. but still. when you're halfway around the world from everything that's familiar, it's nice to have some connections.

not much is going on right now, but i just realized that i'm going to be really busy and have lots of fun in the next two months.

- the karmapa (the head of the kagyu order of tibetan buddhism) is in sarnath right now, and apparently he'll be giving public teachings at some point in the next couple of weeks.
- then i have lots of friends coming. at the end of december, my pals tatjana and aditi are coming to varanasi for a week, and the folks from smith are coming for the exchange program. my good friend elizabeth promised to bring me some coffee from my favorite northampton cafe.
- then, on 5th january, we're all going down to south india for kalachakra (a teaching by the dalai lama). there will be TONS of people there, and it should be lots of fun.
- and then, after the exchange program leaves, my friend jo is coming to varanasi for a couple of months to lead a group of high school kids around. i can't even begin to explain how excited i am to see her.
- and at the end of february, i'm spending losar (tibetan new year) up north near manali with my friend yangri. her brother is becoming a geshe (the tibetan monastic equivalent of a ph.d. - it requires nearly 20 years of studying), and her family is having a big party to celebrate.

i'll post pictures soon so you can all see me with my new long hair and girlish figure. it's creepy.

also, i was just able to access my email for the first time in 2 weeks today. so if you've emailed me and i haven't responded, give me a couple of days and i'll get back to you soon.

winter

it's getting pretty cold here. during the day, in the sun, it gets up into the low 70s, which is nice, but inside and in the shade it's always a few degrees colder. at night it dips down to probably about 50. now, i know that everyone reading my blog (except for karla in sunny florida) is suffering through either a midwest or new england winter right now, and probably hates me for complaining about the low 50s. BUT, the girls' hostel has no heat and no hot water. the door to my room opens into a courtyard, so essentially there's no difference between 'indoors' and 'outdoors' - the temperature is the same no matter where you are. it's not too hard to get used to, but it's forced me to alter some of my habits.

i remember the last time i came here, it was january, and every time i'd walk into the girls' hostel, there would be a crowd of five or six girls around the faucet outside, washing their hair. i was staying in the guest house at the time, where we had private bathrooms and hot water for showers, and i didn't understand why the girls would all be squatting on the ground outside when they had perfectly good bathrooms inside that they could use. but now i know. when there's no hot water, getting your hair wet is a LOT more tolerable when you're in the sun.
and, starting a few weeks ago, i saw some boys at the chai stall wearing gloves with the fingertips cut off. i thought that this was just another strange appropriation of bad western fashion trends from the early 90s (because many of the boys seem to really like bad fashion from the early 90s), but as it's gotten colder, i've realized that it's really the only way to keep your hands warm when you're studying.

when jojo and i first got here, whenever something happened that we didn't understand, we would just shrug our shoulders and say, "tibetans are weird." it became our mantra for a while, while we were still figuring out how things worked. but the more time i spend here, the more i realize that people have reasons for the things that they do. now, i too am washing my hair outside and studying with fingerless gloves.


i still think that tibetans can be pretty weird, though.

two important things to report today...

first:
on friday, my philosophy teacher managed to compare candrakirti's philosophical strategy to the british occupation of india. it was brilliant.

second:
i've lost quite a bit of weight since i've been here, and my hair has grown almost to my shoulders. this makes me feel very, very strange, but my friend pema thinks it's wonderful. she keeps telling me that now i need to buy some tight pants and short shirts so that when i get back to america, all of the boys will follow me around. when i tell her that i don't want all of the boys to follow me around, she grabs me by the shoulders, shakes me, and yells, "why not, connie? WHY NOT??"

and the other day, pema and i were talking about how much longer we're both going to be in school. i explained that i'm planning on going to graduate school in the fall, and that i'll be studying philosophy for a long time to come. she thought about this for a while and said, "connie, you should become a nun. you're not interested in finding a boyfriend, and you like to study. if you're not going to have any fun in this life, you might as well work on having a good rebirth."



i've been thinking about what pema said, and if those are the criteria for entering into monastic life, i think that smith should just put a stupa on the campus center lawn and call itself a nunnery.

my "tibetan class" has slowly turned into "drink chai with kinley and talk about philosophy for a couple of hours". we're both learning a lot from each other, and it's really fantastic, but my tibetan isn't coming along as quickly as it should be. i mean, i've learned some things - i can tell now the difference between when the girls in the hostel are screaming because their friend has a phone call and when the girls in the hostel are screaming because the milkman has come - but i still can't really have a conversation with anybody that lasts longer than a few minutes. my ability to read philosophy is really coming along (i can read entire passages of candrakirti without turning to the dictionary for help), but it's just hard sometimes... nobody really takes me seriously because i can't speak. the girls in the hostel are always amazed to find out that i know something about tibetan philosophy.

the girls in the hostel also don't take jojo seriously. she has a little gas stove, and whenever she cooks dinner, people come in and try to help because they don't believe that jojo knows how to cook. when she says, "guys, i cook at home all the time," they just shake their heads and laugh.