I can’t quite believe that I’ve only been here for a little over two weeks. I’m starting to settle in I think, although I’ve been warned that culture shock starts to set in at around two weeks, so I guess I’m trying to be on the look out for that. We started classes this week. The schedule seems much more like high school than college. We have class from nine to three. Every morning we have language class first. The schedule is kind of loose, so it’s usually nine to whenever the lesson is done (it usually goes about an hour). We have a break, then at 10:30 we have philosophy or culture class (philosophy is on monday and wednesday, and culture is on tuesday and thursday, and on friday we have a discussion section about sort of everything from both of those two classes for the week). That usually goes about an hour and a half. After lunch, we have language again for another hour, except on friday. That’s pretty much what the schedule will be until we break to do our independent research (I forget when exactly that is, but I think it’s in like ten or eleven weeks).
Yesterday I moved into the dorms here. Our group had been living in the guesthouse (pretty much like a hotel), and I had been living with Julia (who apparently is friends with someone who is on the same program that Annie is on, which I think is cool). The roommate stuff is finally figured out now though. I had been told originally that one girl was my roommate, then another. The second person who I thought was my roommate is a nun who just came from Tibet less than a year ago, and she doesn’t speak very much English, so they had Amalia and I switch roommates, since Amalia already speaks Tibetan. So anyway, now I have a roommate. She’s in the teacher training program here, and she’s almost finished. Her room is up on the top floor of the girls’ dorm, so the view is amazing. We’re on the fifth floor, and the dorms are the tallest buildings here, so we can look out over the Kangra valley. I watched the sun rise from the roof this morning too, which was amazing. It doesn’t rise over the mountains, but it does light up the mountains peak by peak which is so cool to watch. It’s pretty quiet on the floor, because not many people live up here (which is also a plus in terms of how many people share the bathroom). Speaking of bathrooms, that’s something to get used to. The showers in the guesthouse never had enough (if any) hot water, but the showers here don’t have hot water at all. There’s a faucet that has hot water, so I’m told you’re supposed to fill up a bucket then take a bucket shower. I haven’t tried that yet, since one of the last things I did before I moved out yesterday was use the shower one last time, but I guess I’ll probably try tonight or tomorrow morning. I guess I should probably just start showering whenever it’s warmest. My standards for my own hygiene have changed since I’ve been here. At home, it’s shower everyday and only wear shirts once before wearing them. Now it’s shower every other day and wear shirts at least twice. It’s kind of gross I guess, but I only really brought three shirts (since I’ve been wearing tee shirts over long sleeve shirts and I only have three of each), and the less laundry I have to do the better. I have started to figure out a system for that though. In summary: soak, soap, scrub, rinse, soak, rinse. It seems to be working, but I can’t tell you how much I miss washing machines.
Yesterday we went to McLeod (Upper Dharamsala) for the second time. It’s an odd sort of touristy, sort of hippie-ish place. We went to the refugee reception center. There was some artwork done by kids there, and it was just like rip-your-heart-out. Ama Adhe spoke to us, while we were there. She was a Tibetan freedom fighter, who was imprisoned for a very long time. I think she was one of the only ones of everyone she went to prison with to have survived. She told us about her experience, which was pretty intense to hear, but what was most amazing was how calm and peaceful she is. She talked about how she used to be angry, but when she talked to the Dalai Lama, he said not to let her anger take over, and now she’s very peaceful about it all. She tells her story, but she tells it in a matter of fact way. It’s just amazing to think that she has overcome her anger despite all the things that happened to her.
After we heard from her, I spent the rest of the day with Julia, Lucy, and Will (other students on the program, from Wesleyan, Emory, and NYU respectively) wandering around town. We looked in shops and ate dinner and saw the most amazing sunset. Then we came back down, and I moved into the dorms, and I spent the rest of the night unpacking and reviewing the alphabet (which I know the word for in Tibetan now).
This morning, I finally made it to morning prayers on time (I had been late the other three times that I went). It’s a pretty cool thing to listen to. For the rest of the day up to now, Will and I wandered around some trails and along a stream that runs next the campus, and then I started making vocab flashcards. Now I'm in the room typing this, and hopefully when I go downstairs to the computer lab, it’ll be open so I can post it. Also, hopefully I can figure out the picture things.