Settling In (Cain's post)

Here are two pictures from our new home in Tongren, (also known by its Tibetan name Rebgong.) A traditional Tibetan village home is formed of pounded dirt walls which make up the exterior of a courtyard space. The home is built inside of, and connected to, these walls, with a center courtyard for work and play.
Here you can see Noah and Anna in what we call the sunshine room while they do their homework. You can see some of the beautiful Tibetan woodwork and carvings all around. The glass walls run around the inside of the courtyard, giving us some protection from the cold winter air. Because we are at a high elevation, the sun's rays are very strong and the room warms from it's unheated nighttime lows (in the single digits) to 65 or 70 degrees in about an hour and a half. [The kids and I wish we could show you more pictures of how we live here, but our camera is broken!] We live in a small town that is in a high mountain valley. Tongren is approximately 7500 feet above sea level. (Timberline Lodge is 6600 feet above sea level.) The valley is perhaps 3/4 of a mile across with high mountain ridges rising at least another 1000 feet to the East and West. This means the Sun doesn't get to us until about 9:30 in the morning and is behind the next ridge by 4:15 in the afternoon. We do our best to get everything done during the warm sunny hours.
The kids are definitely missing their friends and teachers back home. So far, we have had only a few opportunities for them to get together with children their own ages. Noah does get to play soccer with high school kids several times a week. Now that we are better adapted to the elevation here, we hope to get out for a trek up the mountain soon!
That's about it for this post. Noah has started a post which should be up soon. We also will have more pictures once we get our new camera.
Best wishes to everyone back home!
Noah, Anna and Rosa's dad