Hold the train and let me tell you about Losar!

Woah people.

What on earth was I doing going on with my life (which recently has been crammed with stuff, cool, His, and otherwise, happening) and not even stopping to tell you about the Losar festivities?

Cause missing Losar would be a huge loss, particularly to a blog.

The Basics:

• Losar is how they say "New Year" in Tibetan. As in Losar Tashi Deleg! (Good fortune in the new year!)
  
• It's a fifteen day celebration in which families get together, consume outrageous amounts of food and alcohol, and wear their new clothing.
  
• Much of the traditions which take place during Losar are from Bon religious practices meant to appease the gods in hopes for a good year ahead.
• The seond day of Losar begins the period of visitation where familes will rotate around different realitives houses and guests are invited.
  

The Real Deal (part 1):

• The second day of Losar a teammate and I go to visit the family of a guy who became friends with us after meeting us in the street one day.
• Present at this house: Three uncles, at least three aunts, seven neices, a mom, a few random neighborhood folks, and us two white people.
  
• For lunch: sweet tea, butter tea, chang (Tibetan beer, politely declined), raw meat, dried meat, fried bread, two kinds of meat dumplings, pickeled vegetables, and sweets.
  
• Activities of note: Pictures with everyone in the family multiple times, dress up in their spare Tibetan clothes and more pictures, long conversations about a mysterious lama, learn how to make sweet tea, learn how to play 'sho', refuse chang and cigarettes multiple times, leave exhausted four hours later.
  

The Real Deal (part 2):

• The fourth day of Losar we go to meet this same guy, we are taken to a different relatives home in a different part of the city.
  
• Present at this house: all the same folks as before, plus an additional four or five Chinese businessmen/collegues.
  
• For lunch: sweet tea, hot water, sodas, chang (politely declined), raw meat, dried meat, boiled meat, some meat dipping spice, fried bread, chicken feet, pickeled meat, rice, huge variety of vegetable dishes.
• Activies of note: playing games with some of the younger cousins, discussing remedies for hangovers with drunk uncles, more pictures with more family, getting to hold a four month old baby and hum 'Jesus loves me' over him, refuse chang and cigarettes multiple times, leave exhausted three and a half hours later.

Losar was fun. Really. Highly reccommended. Tashi deleg everyone!