Day 2 in Tibet

We are in Lhasa, Tibet at the moment - went to the Potala Palace today, and the Sera monastery (one of the 3 most historically important ones in Tibet). At the monastery, we walked by some of the monks' homes, where an elderly monk was sitting on his porch. He and us smiled at each other, and he invited us over to him. We basically bowed, nodded our heads and smiled alot, since Betsy and I speak about 3 Tibetan words, and he didn't speak English. We left, and then wandered around the area some more. On our way back, he called us over again, and invited us up to his home to have tea and some food. It was neat to communicate with him in different ways. He didn't speak a word of English, and we had a 2 page English-Tibetan dictionary. So, after asking his name, telling him ours, and then asking him where he was from, there wasn't much left in our dictionary, other phrases that didn't seem appropriate - e.g. "Where can we rent a bicycle" or "Where is the guesthouse?" He showed us things in his room (e.g. Buddha wall hangings and locations of Tibetan monasteries), and we did charades-style communciation, and gave him some chocolate (not sure if he liked it or not).

We rode bicycles out to the monastery. Bike rentals in China are an experience. So far I am 2 for 2 renting bikes in rough shape (for some reason Betsy has no problems with her bikes). Today, just as we were within a few yeards of the monastery going up a hill (I was standing up on the pedals), my crank slipped, and soon the 2 pedals were in exactly the same spot - right beside each other, making it impossible to pedal. We locked the bikes and walked through the monastery. Afterwards, we got back on the bikes and coasted down the hill to a restaurant with a friendly looking guy working there. I showed him my problem, and he looked at it, picked up a rock, and started hitting a loose pin in. A crowd gathered, started giving advice, and soon a hammer showed up, they drove the loose pin in the whole way. In a few minutes the bike worked fine and we were back on the road.

Have you ever had yak butter tea? if you want to know what it is like, relax, close your eyes, think of picking up a cup, dipping it in ocean water, placing in the microwave to heat it up, and then stirring in some slightly musky butter into it. I, uh, actually, probably will avoid it from now on.

We are in Tibet for another 5 days or so. It is really wonderful here. I wish it could be longer.

By the way, your probably picked up on the April Fool's day clues (e.g. "Happy April 1st) in my Betsy movie-actress/me as a make-up artist blog entry, but just in case you didn't, it was for April fool's day.

Happy trails,

Eric