HARMONY in THE CHAOS

It has been a week now since arriving in New Delhi for the first time. Yesterday, I arrived at Tashijong Monastery.

After a 15 bus trip along the rocky roads of India, we (other volunteers and I) arrived in Mcleod Ganj, the home of his holiness, the dalai lama, and many other Tibetans. This place was a bit different to New Delhi. New Delhi was always noisy, and always dirty. You could smell the fresh oxygen as we hopped off the bus in Mcleod. I'm used to seeing small towns in Australia which build between the hills. They do it a bit differently here. Mcleod is built all over the hills, so it is a very steep walk up, and a long way. We went to see the Tibetan Operas in a monastery up the top of Mcleod. I had a bit of a case of the old Delhi Belly, so it was quite hard to stand up for 2 hours. Felix and I stayed the night in a hostel, while the other GAPPERS nervously went to their respective monasteries. They all came back the next morning, because they didn't have to teach for another few days.

It was a nice pleasant drive compared to the one we took the day before. In a taxi and it took two hours. Traffic is chaotic, but because it is chaotic all the time, there seems to be harmony within the chaos. You could spend a lot of time worrying about a crash, but it takes too much energy. When we turned off the main road heading towards Tashijong, I felt so excited when I saw the bright yellow monastery tucked into the hill. We drove past bright green rice fields (its wierd seeing an abundance of green, coming from Drought Australia) and up a hill into the monastery area.

The monks are very friendly. Felix and I are waiting to teach tomorrow. We're both fairly nervous about starting off, but I know these nerves will subside quickly. Its all about taking that first awkward plunge. We start tomorrow.