Lhasa, Ground of the Gods

So here I am in the Chinese city of Lhasa studying at a Chinese university. The other night I attended the 58th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. In case you were wondering, the autonomy of the Tibetan people is really... really...
Well anyway, the third in command of the TAR is Tibetan by birth. Also, in case you were wondering, nomads and farmers have a much better life now and everyone is "vigorous" about implementing scientific advancement and economic reform in TAR. Everyone's life is really improving every day and I'd just like to personally thank the military police in TAR for all the hard work they do...They're real nice.
TAR is the Tibetan Autonomous Region, a province of the People's Republic of China. Tibet University is a state school, like SUNY Lhasa, only it would be spelled SUTAR Lhasa. So six days a week we awake in the morning to the state approved news and exercise songs blasted from loud speakers throughout the uni buildings.
'Uni,' the fastest way to tell someone is not from the states: The Australian or European question: "Where did you go to uni?" The American response: "Uh, I didn't go to "uni," I went to college." Apparently our Tibetan uni is under review so the students have extra class, less holidays, and the campus ground crew is working overtime...sort of. Take a look though, they have done a great job because the big dog from Beijing will be coming soon.

The main gate: to walk most places, like the Barkor (a huge market area), we leave from here...
...unless we are going to The Wonderful Vegetarian House or the bike mechanic. Then we walk this way:
...past the music school and...
...by the teacher residences...
...and out the back gate.
These are my comrades at the Foreign Student's Department:
From left to right starting in the front row: Janna and her son Agem shalev (Israeli), Martin (Swiss), Janine (German), Sibili (Brazilian), Michelle (Floridian), Cham pa (Tibetan, he's the maintainence dude), Second row, left to right: Doris (Swiss), Ephriam (Hong Kong), another Swiss lady, Me, Anne (Australian), Rita (German), Gael (Swiss), Back row: Daniel (Spaniard from Barcelona), Joe (Chicagonian), Atisha (Indian from Deli), Julia (Italian), Lucas (German). Missing are Alice from Paris (she's taking the photo), Mayumi from LA via Japan, a Korean, two Japanese, and I am forgetting someone else but I'm not sure who. Here's everybody out at The Lucky Horse Restaurant for Daniel's birthday:


Here at the birthday dinner you can see Ephriam in the left foreground, I would be sitting next to him if I wasn't taking this picture. Now, as I'm sure you can see from the photo, Ephriam is a spritely fellow, and when he was told that Daniel had left the table to "go to the bathroom," he vaulted the bench-chair thing we were sitting on and ran across the room and down the stairs like his life depended on it. Noticing his surprise, Alice also ran, attempting to beat him to the "pa se" (bill in Tibetan). You see, it is a common tactic to go to the bathroom part way through dinner and then pay for everyone's meal. This is because fighting over the bill is a full contact sport in China. However, on this occasion, Anne the Australian had beat everyone to the punch and had snuck out to pay the pa se soon after the second round of ordering food was finished. This made the look of surprise on Ephriam and Alice's winded faces all the more hilarious when they returned to the table to find Daniel wondering where they had gone. Now, in Barcelonan culture, the birthday boy pays for everyone's dinner, so he didn't understand what all the fuss was about. In the end, the damage was 13.5 Yuan a person, which is not quite 2 dollars.
That night we all assembled on the roof of our building for real chai that Atisha brought from India and chocolate cake Michelle generously baked for Daniel's birthday.

I think that is Atisha and me about to climb up the ladder to the second roof area. You can see the Potala Palace all lit up from there, it's quite a sight. I couldn't get a proper picture of it though, so here's a picture of the Potala up close in the day time, just to prove I was there.


One of the most interesting sights one sees in Lhasa is the prostrating pilgrims. Some started their journey hundreds of miles from Lhasa:
Here's a group resting in a shadow before arriving in front of the Potala. This is what they were sitting near:
Here is another unique piece of Lhasan culture, the NangMa:

It is basically a strange sort of night club where the occupants of the large stage change every five minutes and the audience is allowed full participation. Everyone drinks Budweiser or Lhasa Beer out of shot glasses and there is a constant flow of audience members getting on stage to present singers or dancers with Khatas (a long white scarf originally given to spiritual teachers or only on special occasions).
Uploading is taking forever so that's all for now folks.