We Made it to India!

Well here we are in one piece! After a 14 hour bus ride up the mountains we are here in Dharamsala! It is considered to be Fall here but it feels more like summer to us. The sun is quite intense and we are enjoying it immensely! We know it will get cold soon we can already feel a change in the air. It has taken about a week to get our kitchen settled. We had to buy everything including a gas stove which leaked for a few days until we got a new part for it. Yikes! We are boiling and filtering all of our water so we don't have to keep buying water bottles. India doesn' t have a great garbage system and there is a lot of packaging a plastic waste scarring the beautiful scenery. We don't want to add to that so we are trying to be as efficient as possible.

Matt has started his Tibetan class and I have started a Tibetan classes well through the library. Only mine is 1 hour a day. For the rest of my day I am working in the kitchen making lunch for Matt and his 20 or so other classmates. I'm learning to cook Indian and Tibetan food.

We are hiking almost every day at the foothills of the Himalaya's. You can see snow at the top, which in the next few weeks we'll likely see more! We are about a mile above sea level but neither of us have experienced altitude sickness.

We are living in a small town called Gangchen (pronounced Gongkee) between Dharamsala and Mcleod Gange. This small town is the home of the Tibetan government in exhile and other government buildings. It is also home to the Nechung Monastary. At night we hear them chanting and bells ringing. It is a quite a change for us! But we both enjoy it.

One night there must have been some kind of event going on close by. There was devotional chanting or Kirtans until 4:30 in the morning! It was over a loud speaker so we slept on and off all night! Also, every night we are serenaded by many of the stray dogs in our neighborhood. One in particular likes to howl like a wolf which is a little unsettling to hear. He also happens to like sleeping by our door step during the day time. He seems so tired, I wonder why?!

We are very happy to hear the news that Barak Obama is the next President of the US. This is big all over the world and everyone we have met from other countries is very pleased. Matt is also very excited that the Phillies won the world series too! Check out the pic on shutterfly of the old Tibetan guy wearing the Phillies cap.

More to come!! Stay tuned!