Trips to Mcleod and TCV

Note: for whatever reason, i cant post any pictures at the moment, but as soon as I can this post will be a lot more spectacular.
A Teaching! The Dalai lama had a teaching our first week of classes, so we took that Wednesday off to go see him speak. Mcleod is generally a laid back backpacker hippie hangout, but on Teaching days the entire town is packed with people from all around who have come to hear his holiness speak. We took a taxi up from Sarah and managed to wade through throngs of monks, Tibetans in exile, and fairly confused and lost looking white people to get to the main temple, where we had a small patch of floor reserved for us. We had brought small cushions to sit on, but I became very concerned when I caught a bit of a conversation between a nun and an Australian girl- the monk asked if the aussie needed a cushion, and the girl pointedly responded “I’ll be fine; I’m not an American”. Twenty minutes later, when my legs had cramped up and I could no longer feel my butt, I understood entirely. Two hours after that, we got a small break for lunch, which I used to bend my spine back into shape before going back for the concluding 2 hours; the moral here is that americans are weak in the eyes of dedicated buddhists and australians. The teaching itself was pretty interesting, even if the majority went well over my head due to lack of training in Buddhist Philosophy. While I may still be lost in the idea of that which is impermanent, I did come to the conclusion that the Dalai Lama is possibly the best human being in the world, in large part due to his completely bewildering yet infectious sense of humor. Or maybe his eyebrows. The teaching was in English, but at some point he reverted back to Tibetan. The only piece of electronics allowed into the temple are radios for picking up the simultaneous Tibetan- English translations, which was hard enough to understand that we were thoroughly lost by the time the teaching ended.

Hiking! Yesterday (Saturday), Passang-la took us up above Mcleod for some trekking. We have planned a bunch of small day hikes to get us prepared for a final weekend trip up to a glacier in the mountains, as there are certain key skills you need to pick up before truly being ready for such an excursion. The most important of these skills is monkey defense. Should you come across a troop of monkeys, you need to be sure to avert your eyes and not show any teeth, as this will provoke an attack.. Also, immediately find some good sized rocks to throw in case they come at you. I found out yesterday that this has already become second nature, as a friend and I were walking down to the river and found ourselves surrounded by monkeys- without any hesitation we both filled our hands with rocks and kept walking as we had been. Today; however, there were no monkeys. Instead, our little group seemed to accumulate stray dogs (I believe they could tell that we were foreigners and thereby needed protections, as they spaced themselves out among us and made sure noone fell behind). We walked around one of the peaks above dharamsala visiting several noteworthy stupas on our way to the Tibetan Children’s Village. While the views were pretty spectacular, the village itself was incredible. The village is home to hundreds of children whose parents either haven’t managed to escape Tibet yet or did not make it. We started with the appropriately named baby house:
Before moving to some of the other houses where the kids live once they turn 6. The houses are split into three rooms, one for girls and one for boys with a common area in the middle. The bedrooms are lined with bunks (most of which need to be shared) and were astonishingly tidy:

This also happened to be the same house were Passang-la himself grew up. As it was a Saturday, all the kids were outside doing their laundry, and most were more than happy to shout "HELLO! HOW ARE YOU!" as we walked past.