Blog Return to Tibet

Coming back was a voyage. It took the usual time expected but doing a 24 hour trip through five airports and five time zones for the second time in about a month was crazy. I was exhausted from the trip (not sleeping the night before didn't help but I was packing my over weight luggage, okay) but so so happy when I actually made it back into Lhasa.Thankfully I ran into a classmate returning from her break in Austria in the Beijing airport. Without her I think getting on the flight form Beijing to Lhasa would have been a lot more difficult and less pleasant. The PRC government's no foreign tourists in Tibet during March rule wasn't very helpful as we tried to get back to School for the beginning of the semester and Tibetan New Year. After waiting an hour at check-in and going through a special security line (at that point my fifth security check by the way), I was ready to be home at school again. One good thing was that at check-in in the Beijing airport and subsequently at the Lhasa airport no one gave me any trouble or went though my checked luggage (which was like I said very over weight). I had had issues at check-in way back in SFO where they made me take stuff out of my luggage in order to make the weight limit and not have to pay extra baggage fees. I actually was a little disappointed that they didn't test by the weight of my bags because the night before my Lhasa flight while waiting in Beijing airport (in between practicing my newly acquired Ukulele to the entertainment of the airport cleaning staff) I spent a good amount of time trying to balance out my luggage. Strangely I ended up cutting myself on an automatic sink in the Lhasa airport which seemed to use up any of my remaining good travel Karma that I had left over (you can only wave your hands so much in front of those "on sensors" until you hurt yourself).

Ok, so once we made it out of the airport in Lhasa we got on the airport bus back to the city (hour ride). It was strange going so quickly from the States and the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco to a bus full of Tibetans and Chinese driving through the mountainous landscape to the Tibetan capital. I realized that before I left Lhasa to go home I was tired of being a foreigner.Standing out, people always starring and all the questions that go along with it like, "Where are you from?" "How long does it take to fly here?" "How big is your family?" "What do your parents do for work?" "Do you have mountains where you live?" But now I was tired of the questions from the other side being back in the US and the other way around, like, "What is it like in Tibet?" "Is it different there?" "Is it good or bad?" At home I had become tired of being the one who stood out because of my experiences in Tibet. I realized I didn't like it because it is just so hard to describe what it is like to be in Lhasa and actually live her. Things are so complex and the details of life here are so fine you could pass them right by or miss them all together. I think after a while I actually ended up telling people to read this blog for the best representation of what it is like here.

What I noticed right way on the bus passing by many of the housing settlements that I'd seen on the way back to America a month before, was their progress. Many of these settlements as now finished or almost finished houses and store fronts. Construction moves at such an alarming rate here that I just couldn't believe what had been done in so little time. And this observation continued to be true as we reached the city. Whole houses where built and whole blocks of stores and residences were flattened to make way for new developments. Across the street from my school there used to be a whole row of stores in a two story building, but now they are gone to make way as rumor has it for either a new larger park. But there is always the possibility that another huge building of some kind for shopping or the local government could go in instead. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The very first thing I did after hauling all my stuff to my room (it took two trips, the guys at the gate had to watch my big bag while I made the first trip) was go to dinner with my German friend. I think we ended up getting over charged but at least the food was good. Being back was strange indeed. Even though it wasn't a quick transition being back in Tibet (because it took like two days to get back), I felt like being home for a month went so fast, like a flash or vivid dream. Maybe because it was just so nice being home (time flies when you're having fun), or maybe because the two places are just so different they can't both coexist as true reality in my mind at one time (one has to be an unreality or dream like). But they were and still are definitely two different realities and two different worlds even if co-existing. Berkeley still seems very far away at times but when I had just come back from the US I think the wall that is created by traveling and being so recently in both places makes the two places seem even further apart. I guess it's kind of counter intuitive to say that being so recently in two place makes them seem further apart, but it did/does because the differences of the two places are highlighted and kept fresh in one's memory versus as time goes by you forget how truly different living away from the US is. And that's what I think happened to me after living in Tibet for almost five months. I forgot how different living here is versus living in the US. You can't really say it's different in a bad way living here. It's just plain different and sometimes a little difficult to live here (e.g., climate, altitude, lack of heat, structural restrictions). So as I tried to get back into the swing of things I tried to re-assume my usual routine plus some minor improvements, creating a new and improved routine that is.

I had brought back so many cool new things from the US in those oversized bags of mine (in a way to reassert my own identity and partly because I just missed my favorite things too much). I brought back pizza tiles and organic olive oil (to make my toaster oven hotter and for better tasting pizza). Some awesome new running shoes (the 1st five toed shoes Tibet has ever seen I'm sure), and music, music, music (thanks Ben and JDB) and a Ukulele to make my own (thanks to my little sis, you rock!). Also some movies (thanks JDB) and cool new fashionable clothing that screamed "me" (you all know who you are that I'm mentally thanking right now) (Note these clothes included some cool new/ recycled hipster clothing and two, yes, two Oakland A's hats).

My plan to improve my routine with the aid of my new supplies seems to be working. And although I'm now out of my favorite organic nuts and dried fruit, I have been playing my Ukulele (see my videos on this blog), cooking fantastic pizza and exercising regularly. I'm feeling so much better physically (and been able to avoid my former bouts of stomach problems here) that at the end of April I'm competing in a university wide track and field event, the 100m, 4x100m relay and Javelin to be exact.