Finger Painting, Funky Town, and Tablescapes

A few weeks ago, I visited Norbulingka, a place where traditional Tibetan art is taught and produced. It was really amazing and beautiful and only slightly creepy how much it was oriented towards Western tourists. I say this because of my visit to the gift shop, which had real cash registers and employees specifically trained to watch out for shoplifters. This was quite different than what I've come to expect from Indian stores in McLeod, which rely on metal boxes and solar powered calculators in lieu of cash registers. But because of their thriving tourist business, the institution is completely self-sufficient, which is really cool. We got to go on a tour of the establishment and see the art production in action. We saw wood carvers that make amazing pieces of furniture, thanga painters that paint the most detailed Buddhist images, doll makers that replicate traditional Tibetan dress on a miniature scale, and metalworkers that construct giant statues with exact proportions. A remarkable thing about the art is the precision - because the images depicted in the statues and thangas are often used as the focal point for meditation, every figure has to be represented with exact measurements. Each image of Shakyamuni Buddha, for example, has the same proportions, whether it's a tiny detail on a mural or a gigantic statue in the temple. This continuity is necessary for the success of the practitioner uses the image for meditation. Buddhism is pretty big into this whole "unbroken lineage" thing and I have to admit that it's neat to know how much history is behind art being produced today. After our tour, we got to get our hands dirty and learn how to mix paints for the thanga canvases. We got to see each step along the way, from the raw minerals to the final product. The paints, like the images, have a particular and specific formula that must be followed. We played a little game in which the painter would make a color, say a green hue for green Tara, and we would try to make the exact same shade. Needless to say, I failed miserably at this challenge. But I did have a lot of fun getting my fingers dirty and seeing how many colors I could combine before I ended up with a nasty brown color. And of course I came away from the experience with an incredible appreciation for those artists that are able to mix colors to create the exact hue of green Tara.

After playing with paints for a while, the group decided that we deserved a break from all the hard work and learning we had been doing. So we suited up and headed to Funky Town, a swimming pool/restaurant/bar/playground/pool hall. I had my doubts about this so-called "funky" town, but it really exceeded my expectations. And even while I was listing all of the diseases that were probably breeding in the pool, I decided that I couldn't not go swimming. So I dove in. To be honest, the water was a little funky. And it was rather strange to swim fully clothed, but inappropriate to swim otherwise, so I embraced the chlorination of my clothing. It was a really good time and no one ended up with any strange diseases! No additional strange diseases, I guess I should say. The diseases that we already had are still going strong, though. But it's India!

Since we've been living in McLeod, I've been embracing the international scene: the hippies, the sushi, the bonfires, the bootleg movie theaters, etc. I've also been developing an international collection of tablescapes. One is from McLlo's at sunset, the other from a cooking class I attended. There are only two weeks of research left, then our program is over! Hard to believe, right? Then I'll be traveling in India at large for three weeks, followed by a quick flight to London and who knows what after that. I'll definitely be home by July 4th though because I've missed Kenan Stadium's firework display for the past three years and I'll be darned if I don't see it in 2010.

Oh PS - we've done a lot more exciting stuff I didn't write about, so I'll again refer you to Max's blog at experiencingdharamsala.blogspot.com for more information.

Playing Ketchup (It's Different!)

Today I was sitting by a vegetable stand on the side of the road, observing and being amazed by the system of scales that the vendor was using to weigh the vegetables being sold. After I had been looking on for a few minutes, a cow marched up very purposefully and picked up a long white radish that was on display. The vendor promptly picked up another radish and started beating the cow with it, causing it to drop the stolen radish. The episode concluded with the cow being chased down the road and the vendor carefully placing both radishes back on his stand, soon to be bought by unknowing customers. Oh, India.

It’s been a while since my last post and I wish my words could convey all that I’ve experienced in the past month! Basically, I traveled around Southern India with my dad and sister for a week, left Sarah and moved up to McLeod Ganj, and have just finished three weeks of living with my homestay family. My mom also visited during this time and got to experience a night in my homestay as well! I’m living in a hotel for the next two weeks until the start of the research period portion of the program. I spent hours last night putting up newspaper clippings and photos from home to get comfortable in my hotel room, making it feel as college-y as possible. I’m staying with Emma and Tara and we have great big windows that provide us an up close and personal view of the monkey business going on in the trees and a view down the mountain that’s gorgeous. We have made our house a home and I’m excited to spend time with all the Emory kids before we split up for the research period.

All in all, life has been pretty marvelous for the past month. I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had over the past month and have met some truly wonderful people. My time in my homestay was so much fun and it was super relaxing to live in such a loving environment right after moving up to the city. My ama-la took really good care of me the whole time, including the night I spent throwing up everything I had recently ingested. She made me six bowls of rice porridge in the next day and crushed my Tibetan medicine for me in the morning as well. The time I spent traveling was also so much fun – to see the coast and be blessed by the elephant Lakshmi and spend time with my wonderful father and sister. And getting to show my mother around McLeod inspired me to see India from a new perspective, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve been having a lot of fun hanging around McLeod Ganj, going to sing-alongs, meeting international travelers, and trying to improve my Tibetan language skills. I can almost speak in full sentences now!

The internet is spotty at best in McLeod (for those like me who are too lazy to chase it, at least) and pictures don’t seem to want to upload right now, so I apologize. To conclude, I’ve decided that I’m very interested in space travel, so whoever wants to start a fund to send Kathryn to space should go right ahead. Thanks!

Holi Moly and Bod Rangzen

Many exciting happenings around Dharamsala! This week is my last at the College for Higher Tibetan Studies Sarah Campus, which saddens me greatly. But the past week has been so much fun! Last weekend was the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to India and Sarah was the institution in charge of welcoming him back. I got up with my roommate at six so we could wash our hair and dress in our finest, and then get incredibly sweaty and dusty on the multiple kilometer hike to the airport. Waiting for His Holiness was reminiscent of the Christmas parades in Chapel Hill, except instead of wreaths and bows there were prayer flags, incense burnings, and auspicious symbols in the street. And then instead of an hour long parade of floats and Santa Claus, there was a two second time period during which HHDL rode past in his car with the windows rolled up. He was smiling though! It was really fun, actually, and we had delicious lassis afterwards to cool down, which is a great way to conclude any event.

Last Sunday was the holiday holi, which some of you might be familiar with due to Google’s theme days – although I’m not sure if the themes are different over here at Google India. Regardless of Google’s art, holi happened here, not so much on campus but in the neighboring Indian towns. Holi, I guess I should explain, is celebrated by people throwing colorful chalky powder on one another. I asked many people about the significance and history of holi to no avail. A few of us went to Lower Dharamsala in search of celebration, but caught only the tail end of it. So we bought a few colors ourselves, intending to bring them back to campus and surprise attack our Tibetan roommates… but we ended up walking back and impatiently ripping into the bags and having an all-out war on the road back. It reminded me of the movie Color Wars that used to play at UNC’s planetarium, if any of y’all remember that classic. We had a good time and managed to save a few hits for our friends back at Sarah, which was obviously appreciated. It was nice to take a step outside of Sarah and experience real India for an afternoon!

As I mentioned previously, this is my last week at Sarah. After this our group is moving up the mountain to McLeod Ganj to live with families in homestays. We went up today to meet our future families and now I’m so beyond excited for it! I will be living in His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Temple for the two weeks we’re doing homestays. My pa-la (adopted father) is the handyman around the Temple and my ama-la (adopted mother) is the tailor that takes care of the monks’ robes. They live in the Temple building right across from an amazing eatery called Namgyal Café, which I’m excited to be near! They have an 11 year old daughter who I didn’t get to meet today because she’s away at a TCV school and a 7 year old son who is going to tutor me in Tibetan. He seems like a pretty typical 7 year old boy, full of energy, eating cake, and playing with toy cars. We had a rousing game of Jenga while I visited with them today, which ended in a tie. They seem wonderful and I can’t wait to move in!

I don’t actually move in with them until March 21^st though because my spring break starts at the end of this week! My father and sister are supposedly en route to India at this very moment, slowly but surely making their way to me! They’re coming up to McLeod in a few days and after my classes end we’re going to Delhi and traveling from there wherever our hearts lead us. Luckily they are arriving just in time for March 10^th, which is National Tibetan Uprising Day. Wiki it and educate yourself about the so-called “Tibet Question!” Until next time, Bod Rangzen!

A Few of My Favorite Flora

My Favorite Fauna

I'm sorry for the awful formatting of this blog post, but I figured that oddly arranged pictures of animals would be better than no pictures.
So try not to get distracted.

Some Auspicious Afternoons

For all those that were waiting on the edges of your seats, Losar ended wonderfully! As I mentioned, the last day of Losar was my friend Molly’s birthday. That was the plan anyway. Turns out, that specific day was deemed to be inauspicious. Anyone on this study abroad program can tell you the importance of auspiciousness and that you definitely do not want your Losar to end on an inauspicious day. Obviously, the only solution was to prolong the holiday! Losar was officially extended one more day and unofficially extended for many more days. The inauspicious day was still a holiday though, of course. It turned out to be a fabulous day and a group of us went on a picnic and spent a wonderful afternoon in the sun!

We went about 30 minutes outside of Dharamsala to the Kangra Fort, which is a super old and cool fort (I didn’t exactly commit the history on the sign at the entrance to memory, sorry…). Anyway, it’s on the top of this mountain with a spectacular view of the surrounding landscape. There were rivers running through the valleys on either side of the fort and mountains on all sides. We spent a while there, had a picnic with the Losar food, explored the landscape, sunbathed, and played cards. It was a marvelously relaxing mini vacation and I had the best time soaking in the scenery and the animal life. It seems that I’m not only slightly fascinated by monkeys, but all sorts of creatures. This category includes but is not limited to goats, cows, sheep, hawks, and pigs. I’ve just never seen these animals so close before and am strangely enthralled by them! I think my next blog post will be a flora and fauna tour of my India trip so far.

The fort was absolutely magnificent and I wish I could elaborate on it but I don’t think my efforts will be very successful. They do say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll put my photos where my mouth is and let y’all see the scenery for yourselves. The day after the inauspicious day we traveled to Bir, which is about two hours (East?) of Dharamsala and houses a significant Tibetan community. We stayed at the guest house at Sherabling monastery and again enjoyed a lavishly quiet and peacefully beautiful landscape. The quiet was only sporadically interrupted by young monks lighting fireworks to celebrate the end of Losar. In Bir we toured a Tibetan Children’s Village school. The TCV school system was set up when the Tibetans realized exile would last a while and they needed a way to continue the legacy of Tibetan language and culture outside of Tibet, where education is headed in a different direction. It’s a surprisingly well run and organized school that is very efficient and produces hard working and motivated students interested in preserving the unique Tibetan identity.

It turns out that the TCV schools all have four houses that their students are divided into and during the year they have competitions where each house has an opportunity to win a competition and a big trophy. I wondered if this practice was initiated before or after Harry Potter was popularized. Karma, the young Tibetan guy that helps out with our program, was in the Gryffindor equivalent and very proud of that fact. After the TCV tour we had an audience with Ani Tenzin Palmo, a Tibetan nun of Western origin who has gained some notoriety from the books she has contributed to. Her life story is really fascinating if you want to check it out and recently she decided to build a nunnery in India, which we toured. It was extraordinarily beautiful and so forward thinking! The buildings were gorgeous and extremely environmentally friendly. I’m so grateful on this trip that
I’ve gotten to meet and converse with so many wonderful people. And next weekend is supposedly our teaching with His Holiness, the most auspicious figure of all those in exile!


I can’t wait. I’ve been in India for just over a month now. Although it is a bit misleading to say that I’m in India because I’m really thoroughly entrenched in Tibetan culture and community at all times. But I’ve loved almost every minute of it so far and can not wait to see what comes next! I also wanted to mention the fact that my friend on the trip, Max, is a splendid photographer and is keeping a blog at
experiencingdharamsala.blogspot.com which has some great pictures to check out! Keep your eyes on this blog for an upcoming smorgasbord of flora and fauna that will hopefully make you as happy as it makes me!

Losar Tashi Delek!

Today is the third and final day of Losar, which is the celebration of the Tibetan New Year. It has been so much fun to have a holiday and see so much traditional Tibetan cultural practices in action! The students here at Sarah have had a week off of school to prepare and participate in Losar celebrations. You’ll have to bear with me in my attempts to transliterate the Tibetan words into English. So last week we started with the baking of khap-se, which are New Year’s cookies! All of the students gathered in the dining hall and they would bring in huge sheets of dough and we would cut them up and shape them. Thousands and thousands of cookies were made – the entire student body worked on them for about six hours! So there is plenty of khap-se to go around, and it apparently sticks around well into the summer months (the Tibetans don’t seem to have such a strong sense of things being fresh and stale that I’m used to).

The night before Losar began we had a special soup called gu-thuk­, which is a variation of the traditional Tibetan soup, which is called ten-thuk­. The gu-thuk has noodles and vegetables and special balls of dough with written messages cooked inside of them. They’re reminiscent of fortune cookies, except a lot messier to get at your fortune because it’s in the middle of a dense doughy ball covered in soup. And the fortunes aren’t quite as cheery as usual – they’re statements about your character and most are strangely negative. A really popular one this year was sol-pah­, which translates to ‘charcoal’ and represents “a cruel person.” Another common one was sru-pen, which translates to ‘chilly’ and represents “a blunt or sharp tongued person.” Luckily mine was not so terrible. I fished out a phrase that means ‘joyful little shoe.’ Unfortunately, my Tibetan has not progressed to the point where I can read that Tibetan phrase (it has vowels, suffixes, prefixes, stacked letters, and umlauting sounds – yikes!). But a joyful little shoe is “a person who will always reach his desired destinations and will be successful in all he does.” Hooray!

Losar itself started on Sunday morning at five am, when my roommate woke me up so that we could wash our hair before going to prayers, which were at six am. We groomed ourselves for a while and she helped me put on my chupa, which is the traditional Tibetan dress. Thank goodness she was here to help because I would have been completely lost without her! The technique behind the blousing is definitely an acquired skill that I have yet to acquire. We went to prayers, which was exciting because everyone was all dressed up and we had a special offering of katas (ceremonial scarves) to the throne of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We were served rice, which we got to throw in the air for part of the ceremony. After prayers we had a special breakfast of chang-pue porridge. Chang-pue is fresh Tibetan beer made from barley and honestly was a little bit strong to handle at seven am. Everyone from Emory took about one sip and then headed back to the kitchen to make toast and drink coffee.

But don’t worry; Losar is all about eating so we did not go hungry that day. The first day of Losar is traditionally spent in the home with the family, but the students here are not able to go home to Tibet, so they decorate their rooms and visit all day long. I helped my roommate decorate her friend’s room with streamers and origami and paper chains and snowflakes, etc. Each room also has an altar set up with pictures of HH the DL and assorted Buddhist imagery. The rooms also have offerings set up, which I have a wonderful picture of! This picture is actually from the room where the Parliament of the Tibetan Government in Exile convenes, so it’s a very nice altar. On the left is che-mar, which is tsampa flour mixed with butter (tsampa is a huge part of Tibetan culture) and on the right is lo-pue, which are shoots of wheat. Upon entering a room during Losar, you’re supposed to take a pinch of each and say “tashi delek ae-ma bak-dro ku-kham sang, ten-du de-wa tho-par sho” which means “may you have a magnificent and healthy year ahead and may you always attain happiness.” Now try saying it three times fast! The upright panels coming out of the che-mar and the lo-pue are butter sculptures! They are so cool! Butter sculptures are a big part of Losar and there are some ridiculously detailed and beautiful ones that I’ve seen around. In the back of the picture you can see some big pieces of khap-se, which are cookie representations of traditional parts of the altar, including a sheep’s intestines and head. In exile, these are largely represented in cookie form. But according to my language teacher, “of course in Tibet we eat the whole sheep’s head… especially the kids – they love it!” I’m not sorry to say I have seen no real sheep’s heads on any altars in India.

The main activity during Losar is socializing and spending time with friends and family. The days are spent roaming from room to room. Tibetans make very good hosts and hostesses! I have a picture of Gen Passeng-la’s daughter, who was adorable in her pink chupa and pigtails offering cookies to everyone.

These three days are the only time that the boys are allowed in the girls’ dorms and vice versa, so it’s very exciting! The nights are usually for festivities including bonfires, alcohol, and fireworks. Good combination, right? But this year, the high up voices have let it be known that Losar should be celebrated in a more somber fashion. Since the 2008 uprisings in Tibet and the subsequent hardships of those in Tibet, Losar has been toned down to express mourning for those suffering in Tibet. This year it’s supposed to be more about religious traditions and spending time together than dancing and drinking. People are still playing and listening to music and drinking chang-pue, just not going crazy.

Although today is the 21^st birthday of Molly, one of the Emory girls on the program. We shall see how that turns out! On Wednesday the Emory program is going on a fieldtrip to Bir, where we will be visiting monasteries and meditating and who knows what else. I’ll talk more about that later – for now, ten-du de-wa tho-par sho! Happy Losar!