Ha-ha listen to the engine whine!

April 27, 2008 in flickr, friends, images, india, photos, thought

The big news is that school is (kind of) over: culture paper handed in Wednesday, Tibetan exam taken Thursday, and philosophy papers finished yesterday (was it really yesterday?). And, just like that, another semester is basically finished. We have from now until May 20 for our independent research projects, which is certainly going to be intense and a fair amount of work, but of a totally different sort than the reading/writing grind of the semester.

The other exciting news is that I am now established in my exceedingly humble abode, a wonderfully tiny room above the temple at the Tashi Choeling monastery (of the Drukpa Kargue sect). Sure, the room is tiny and meagerly equipped, but it always smells like incense and the rinpoche staying in the other room (like all the other Tibetans around the monastery) are not only friendly but willing to tolerate my attempts at Tibetan conversation. Then there’s the amazing blend of sounds coming from the street and the temple and the apartments next door; the adorable and eminently cuddle-able monastery cat whose from legs are literally half the length of her back legs; the tiny monks running around everywhere.

I’m obviously pretty thrilled to be living here. It’s the perfect antidote to a stressful week of writing papers and looking at hotel after overpriced hotel and generally freaking out about the uncertainty surrounding the near future. This next month is going to be an interesting experiment in having some structured time to decompress from the semester but still actively engage in the stuff we’ve been studying. I’m a little nervous about not having everyone living in the same building, having certain times that everyone’s gets together, but at the same time I think the living arrangements we’ve worked out will make for a good balance of seeing a lot of people but also having plenty of “me time” to process everything. I’ll hopefully also be able to better engage with all the non-Emory stuff in McLeod, which has been hard to do what with, you know, school and stuff.