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Up north
Entry 4 of 22 | show all | print this entry |
Wow, so much has happened since I last wrote you, I hope I remember to get everything in. First of all, I just got an email from mr. Perkins picturing me on the front cover. YIKES!!! Who made that decision!! Ahh I'm so embarrassed. I do not give permission for any of my e-mails to be published, by the way.
Ok, so I last left you in Tibet. Our last day there we ventured out to the Samye monastery via all modes of transportation. We took a bus through rural villages and wilderness to a random river where a sketchy ferry awaitedus. When I say ferry, it was more of a glorified crabbing boat about 6 ft wide and no longer than our living room. We all piled on there while the drivr stood up in the back and directed the puttputt motor like some Asian gondola. The ride was beautiful though, and about an hour later we got to somewhere on the other side of the river where we were met by two jeepish vehicles. They had about 4 seats inside and then two bench seats in an open back. on the way there I got to ridein the back while we bumped along through the Tibetan wilderness. If I had not clung to the side I definitely would have flown off the back. We felt like we were on a high-=altitude safari, with no wildlife except for yak and sheep. The monastery was pretty impressive though...it was seriouslyin the middle
of nowhere surrounded by sandy mountains and a few rustic (think primitive) homes. We got to do the whole journey back...it ended up being one of our favorite activities though. On the ferry on the way back we shared the boat with goats and monks
That night, for lack of a better activity we decided to find the yak monument (we just like saying the word yak so weve developed an obsession with the Tibetan animal. A couple ambitious guys decided to climb the 20 ft structure, and we had to run away before the Chinese cops came to stop us.
That night proved to be fatal for a few inthe group. Early the next morning my roommate Martha and I were awoken by David from our neighboring hotel room who was doubled over in pain. Luckily I had my cellphone...but Dr. Kiely's phone wasn't working so we called everyone we could to try and get his room number. There was no one at the reception and it took 2 hours before we finally got him. He ended up taking David to the hospital for food poisoning from ice cream he'd eaten the night before. Apparently the Tibetan hospital was pretty unsanitary...they just gave David a trash can to throw up in, and Dr. Kiely had to demand they use a new syringe to give him a shot. I'm so lucky that wasn'tmee...I was tempted to eatthe same ice cream. We found out later that three other students who only had a few bites of his ice cream also threw up. We had to fly out to Chengdu though, and I'm sure the plane ride was miserable for them.
Chengdu was pretty fun for those of us who were healthy enough to see it. We went to a shopping distrcit and guesss waht! Two other girls and I were stopped by a National Geographic film crew to be in a promotional video of Chengdu. So we had to pretend to shop at this one vendor. and we did the scene like 5 times just like we were in a movie or something. That night we went to a teahouse to see a Chinese varieyt show thing. While we were waiting these masseuses started harassing us to give us massages. A couple of peopl.e in the group actually got them...they looked intense but refreshing. What was even funnier was that they were also expert ear cleaners ('m not making this up). ONly 2 people dared to have that done. They wore headlight hats like miners and had these long wires with fuzz on the end to clean it, and these vibrating metal rods to give an inner ear massage. Weird. Anyway, the talent show was pretty good. One of my favorite acts was this shadow puppet guy who made all sorts of animal
silhouettes with his hands.
Right now we're in Inner Mongolia. Today we visited an art/music school...it was really neat. A bunch of students gave us a concert on these instruments that are Mongolian violins. They are the size of a violin but held like a cello, and have a beautiful sound.
Alright I'm about to go eat dinner
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