So now that the immediate joy of becoming engaged is still with me (mouth hurts from smiling), I figured I should give you guys an update on my last trip south. The day before my birthday, two guys rolled into town, and we decided to leave the next day and head south to a little city called Jyekundo. It's in the middle of the Khamba Tibetan area, and at about 12,500 feet. So that Saturday, we hopped onto a sleeper bus (three rows of bunk beds down a bus), and off we went. While we were there, we met up with one of the guy's friends, a monk at a monastery way outside of the town. We'll call him Nate (his name is hard to pronounce, much less spell). So we met up with him, and then his cousin/brother (familial relations here are defined in a different way than in the west-Tibetans will call cousins brothers and sisters just as fast as they will their real brother or sister), who is a Lama in that area as well. So my 24th birthday was spent eating dinner and hanging with a monk, a lama and his wife. Pretty sweet, if you ask me. The next day we went out to Nate's monastery, and then hooked up with his family, all nomads. His father is an 82 year old nomad-quite feat out here. While there, we met most of his family (which includes lots of monks and really cute kids)...this was Christmas day. the few days, we just kinda wandered around the town. I had to miss a day to the effects of eating lots of tsampa mixed up with yak-dung-hands...does wonders for the digestion, lemme tell ya. We checked out the main monastery in ton, and met some of the younger monks who were just getting out of school (where they learn all things needed for a monk's life-Tibetan scriptures, various Tantric things, etc.). I had to leave the next afternoon to get back to Xining and teach, so the next morning we went up to the mani stone pile on the outskirts of the town. A mani stone is a rock that has some sort of Tibetan Buddhist mantra carved or painted onto it, usually the "om mani padme um." That place is huge. So that's that. Here's a few pictures, and if I can get my Flickr site to work, a whole lot more will follow.