Life at 12000 ft...

But first, a story:

We were in Beijing for less than 18 hours and somehow I managed to convince myself that I was still in America because I ate some pizza for dinner and washed it down with the cheapest Starbucks I've ever bought... I was so exhausted I don't even think I was really human, more like a zombie, which makes the rest of this story all the more incredible. So I sleep the whole night, get in a taxi at 7am and head back to the airport to catch my "direct" flight to Lhasa (there's a good reason direct is in quotation marks). Only to find out about 5 minutes into the taxi ride that I didn't receive the right travel documentation... so it's a race back to the hotel with a somewhat crabby taxi driver and a wait until the lady with the documents showed up... then it's a race back to the airport (through Beijing morning traffic) in order to make my flight on time, add to the list of impossibilities the fact that I have two suitcases (we're only allowed one free of charge) and one of them is overweight. Get this: there was no line at the check-in and the lady didn't charge me a single kuai, and I made it past security and to the gate 5 minutes before they started boarding. His timing is everything...

Now for the "direct" flight. "Direct" in Chinese really means "you will stop in Chendu get on a bus, go the terminal, wait one hour, get back on the same bus, drive back to the same plane, and continue to Lhasa" Seriously.

So let me describe the flight: breath-taking... literally. The mountains are so high that they stick through the clouds and even though you're 30000 ft in the air the mountains seem close. Landing was like something out of a movie: you curve in through the mountains and land in what appears to be a vast river bed which only at last minute turns into a run-way. Surreal.

And so now I'm here... I have unpacked and begun settling into the apartment. I have probably drank about 40 gallons of water in one day, have experimented with various positions in order to most effectively use the squatty potty, have eaten at a noodle shop across the street, have toured the campus, have eaten yak on the roof of a restaurant, have walked up to the Potala palace, have seen animals in all stages of being sold for food, have done a lap around the Jokhang Temple, have met the rest of the team here, have ridden in a mini bus and another ornery taxi, have been blown away at the beauty of this place, have been spell bound by the way that it seems to come from another time, have been heart broken for the people in need here. Talk about stimulus overload.

And so now I'm here?

I can hardly believe that this amazingly beautiful, alarmingly strange place is my home.