Noah's post 4

Well, we're done traveling and flying an' every thing else. Rebgong: a small village where mutton* is the meat, Tibetan is the language and friends are scarce. So my DS is my friend as my mom says. Which is true, of course. Tip for Leo: look for HM's in Pokemon teach it to a pokemon and it can do special things (such as cut down small trees.)

It's a hard time in RebGong. For heat we have a black stove which needs to be constantly stoked with coal. Mom and dad have a small heater (that we bought in Beijing) in their room but our room is still warmer and is referred to as the Stove room. There are also rooms such as: the sunny room--it is usually very warm because of all the wall size windows; secret room (is the place were the girls wanted to sleep. It's a small room with mats to sleep on and it's very own tv,) and the " kitchen" which is as cold as your garage at the best of times but at least it is usually well stocked. For a sink there is a big bowl called a basin* to which you must constantly add hot and cold water . Pit toilets and everything else* make it VERY VERY hard to get used to living here. But adapting is all part of the business for us, a few good things:
1. I get to play my DS

2. When we get home, we'll have super stamina! Because living in the mountains let you store more oxygen in your blood since there is very thin air in the mountains.

Near our house is a college where I go regularly to play soccer with the students. The field, as you can see in the picture opposite, is nothing like our school's. It is mostly dust and gravel, no slide tackling here! The field is the normal large field. On one side is concrete stairs/grandstands and on the other is a ditch.

In Rebgong children go to the bathroom on the streets, gross right? You can never tell what the wet stuff on the ground is or if mud is really what it looks like. Yesterday I went on a walk with my mom and got bitten by a dog, dogs are watch dogs in China.






All around the monastery are wheels like the ones in the picture to the right. You can only spin them when you walk clockwise around the monastery and then you can only spin them clockwise . People believe that a special prayer is said when you spin the wheels.
In case you don't know, Buddhism is very bloody in monastic dances. It's all about fighting demons and driving them back. Some people will hold fake skulls and you can see the brains of the skull, while dancing. How gross is that?!!?




* mutton: sheep meat * basin: a big plastic or glass bowl used for washing hair or hands

* cold nights, no indoor plumbing, no dish washing machine, no dryer, water has to be boiled before it can be drunk.


Bye, everybody!