Tuesday June 12, 2012

School hasn’t started here yet—it starts next week—and so Namnang and I spent the day relaxing, as he says he does most of the time. We went down the road a few miles to the Yellow River and then walked to the smaller river near the town and sat by a stream looking at tadpoles and frogs. The grass here is short and it looks so perfect, like a golf course. 

Later, he had to go draw a picture for school, so I went on a walk around the small town. It is very small with one row of shops at the bottom of a little hill, and then Namnang’s family’s houses near the monastery.

At his house, there is his aunt who is a nun and who we call Ani. She does most of the work, especially cooking. That night after dinner, she and I went to circle the stupa as you can see people doing during most of the day. We first stopped by the giant prayer wheel, which is a huge wooden one about 10 ft diameter that you have to push around by hand. We were going around and around, and I don’t do spinning things so well so I was getting pretty dizzy, but since I didn’t know how to say “I’ll catch you on the next round”, we just kept going. When she finally stopped, we walked up to the stupa and around it… and around and around again. I think she planned to do about 20 rounds, but I stopped off at about 15 because my ears were getting cold since the sun was setting. 

kitchen/dining/living room

laundry day

cute pony

Today it rained a little, one good thunderstorm for about 15 minutes and it was sunny again. I spent a lot of time outside reading, and inside reading when it was too wet.