Some visuals... more to come...

And then there were three...

The mission:
Chinese milk tea complete with chewy tapioca balls. Hot or cold... as you like.
The method:
Take a bus to the edge of town, walk until your legs begin to tingle, hum Chinese pop songs that you can't actually sing along to, squint until you see off in the distance a tiny little speck of a shop with the Chinese characters for cha do do (tea much much), race to the counter, wait patiently as the person in front of you buys her weight in hot dogs, order three teas, enjoy while squatting on the filthy curbside.
The menagerie:
One American foreign expert of nothing. One Chinese student expert in snacks. One Tibetan student who was guilted into tagging along for the ride.

************

In my two years here I had never undertaken so random a mission using so haphazard a method with so diverse a menagerie. As step one of our method chugged along I found myself sandwiched between the profoundly Tibetan and the quintessentially Chinese and felt a little claustrophobic as both stared me in the face. What had I done?

It wasn't until we were squatting on the curbside before my anxiety over the potential disaster that I had orchestrated subsided. There's something alarmingly equalizing about squatting, not to mention squatting side by side on some stained pavement slurping tapioca balls through wide straws as flecks of garbage trundle past in the breeze. Though I tried not to show it, it struck me continuously how the three of us represent all of the conflict and beauty that this city suffers under. We chatted in English, I clarified in Tibetan, they exchanged in Chinese, and the world became three dimensional as the layers of language swirled around creating a conversation that was nearly impossible to follow due to the fact that perhaps only two thirds of us were understanding any given exclaimation. Everything repeated three times with the only variation the order. It's delicious! Shimbodu! Hao chi! Slurp slurp slurp. Di johkma ribe? Is that an ant? zhege mayi ma? Slurp slurp slurp. Wo hen shui jiao. Nga galeh cahgbodu. I'm sleepy. Slurp slurp slurp. On and on and on... round and round and round.

But not everything can be translated.

When the paper cups were dry, the breeze icy at our backs, the wide straws useless, the ground more disgusting than we could bear, and the lady returned for her second order of hot dogs... we stood up to leave. Mission completed, we retraced our method back to the school.

After a threefold declaration of pleasure in our outing and a good bye, zai jian, chu-oh to the girls, I crunched through yellow piles of leaves with my mind reeling from our triangular conversation and proximity to the complexity that I always knew was here but had never sat between on a bus, had never wandered amidst down the street, had never partaken of tea among.

I have a lot to learn... and there's no one and no way to translate it.

The Lion

Look! The Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has been victorious...

I stretched my legs out in front of me and leaned back on my hands. A rooftop on the rooftop of the world being an ideal location to let a few days sweep over you like crinkled yellow leaves somersaulting over the sidewalk below. The sun dipped behind the darkened mountain and I remembered...

An empty tea house save for a handful of drowsy flies and a teacher and a student. Two bowls of noodles licked nearly clean bridging the minute expanse of the wobbly wooden table between us. A glum looking child squeezing the breath out of a matted kitten in the corner. She reached in her bag and hands me back a precious Book, that I had had no intention of getting back. Knowing she couldn't have completed it in only a few short weeks I asked what she thought, why she was giving it back.
I showed it to my uncle she said. It was the only response I needed knowing that her uncle was a long established monk who she honors as the wisest person in all the world. I fingered the paper cup of cooled soggy tea leaves and suddenly realized that this girl's journey was far longer and more crowded with family members than I had previously understood.

The clouds bright with the setting sun floated over the rim of the darkening mountain like a wave of light crashing on the shores of shadow. They spilled over the edge and dissolved into spray that left the soft blue sky clear and tranquil as a sigh.

I opened the overly organized email inbox only to be greeted by a lengthy email from a colleague I only worked with my first semester ever in Lhasa. Back before I could discern which shops were grocery stores and which ones were restaurants. Back before butter tea was a reality. Before I stopped being shocked at where I was when I woke up every morning. Surprised at the seemingly rapid updates in his life I was more shocked to read this: What you have done in Lhasa explains what love is. Love is sacrifice to other people. Like the lion in the movie The Chronicles of Narnia. The large black font swam before my eyes and I read the lines over and over again knowing that this man believed 'only in nature' and yet that he had access to greater truth than he could ever have known.

The mountains went from a burnt orange to a deep purple to a dusky gray black and one tiny neon pink cloud danced alone in the pale sky. A sliver of moon made a delicate appearance and a cool breeze rustled the nearby trees and brought the sound of a woman's voice to my ear.

I had hardly knocked at the door to my colleagues apartment on the floor below me before it opened and we sat down to chat and drink a translucent red tea. The talk began of his holiday trip and wound its way to his planned retirement, looped through a few questions of history, and meandered towards a Book he'd been given from a teacher ages ago, pulled down from a nearby shelf, obviously nearly untouched but left on the table for the time being. His halting speech filled the room as he claimed that the belief of this city was so selfish, only for one people group, at least mine was open for anyone, indeed everyone. Even for you I affirmed as his oddly contagious laughter sloshed the tea in his tiny glass.

Up there on the rooftop the breeze was getting cooler but the roof remained warm and I stayed a little longer not wanting to miss a moment or a stroke of the masterful though mute performance that spun and dissolved over the tips of the jagged mountains, now nearly completely black in shadow.

My computer had never been in more rustic conditions as I proped it up on a wooden board which also balanced cups of sweet milk tea and I listened and watched as a long time monk friend scrolled through pictures of his holiday travels. Pictures of rainbows, and snow, and lakes, and mountains, and monasteries, and flags, and broken statue remains draped in katas flashed on the screen. When the faucet of picture stories had run dry we remained at the shady table and chatted while we finished the last of the tea. In response to something I remain unable to pinpoint he stared across the rickety board at me and scolded me for not thinking of myself enough and began to use my name as an adjective. You are too Kelly, always your mind is on Him, should you think of your own self this is best. And I laughed and reminded him of all the times he had called me selfish because I refused to participate in the detachment theories of his belief. He shook his head: You are too Kelly.

That evening I had walked slowly back through the beautiful weather past children scream giggling on playground equipment, past students with covered faces sleeping in the grass, past men urinating on the nearby fence... and nearly right into a hobbled Tibetan woman walking the opposite direction. Her face was a shadow to me as mine was a flash of bright to her and as we passed I heard her call out in a voice that sounded like ancient waters and could have called stones from their slumber: Oh---kay. My hand instinctively covered my grinning mouth as I thought: she's right, it is okay.

Lhasa sunsets are like a symphony playing a lullaby. Rich but gentle. Fireworks in slow motion, a swirl of dark colored paint on the canvas of the sky, in my greed to look ever upwards taking it all in the filth terror below subsides to a nearly forgettable moan. And I remembered...

Look! The Lion from the tribe of Judah... Then I saw one like a slaughtered Lamb.

I'll fly away...

I tapped at the cracked window and called out my most cheery "shopa deleg" (good morning) while the stars still twinkled overhead and the sun remained deep in sleep. The gate grandfather's wrinkled shivery arm handed me the keys to the school gate which clinked open loudly in the frosty pre-dawn air. Though clearly in a sleepy haze he had the state of mind to ask "cowah droga?" (where are you going?)

Some glad morning when this life is over... I'll fly away.

My legs felt stiff as they pumped the bike pedals through the dark deserted city streets. I met Dolker at the bus station surging like a beehive, the only sign of life aside from the dazed street sweepers in orange coveralls that I had passed that morning yet. We wiggled our way through the crowds after scarfing some tasteless rice porridge and found two seats as the back of the musty butter smelling bus.

To a home on His celestial shore... I'll fly away.

The air was crisp slicing through our cracked window. The river was turquoise, the sky was blue nestled in a sheet of clouds. The mountains were dotted with yellowing trees and reddening bushes giving the illusion of flames licking their feet. When the road winding through the mountain passes turned into a one lane ordeal with frequent blocks due to stray yak, goat herds, and squealing pigs, I realized how far away from Lhasa we had come. When the one lane road turned into dirt I realized how far we still had to go.

I'll fly away.

Slightly queasy with sloshy stomachs we arrived at Dregung Monastery. Like red and white lego blocks chucked on the side of a sculptural masterpiece it was a shock to the senses to glance left and see the snow dusted peaks towering above a freshly harvested valley and glance right and see the smattering of gaudy temples. And the birds, black shadows swooping low, black foreboding packs gliding through the thin air, black gusts suddenly bursting from nearby bushes, they were everywhere. Shocking in their abundance and huge size. Dregung specializes in Tibetan sky burials, corpses cut up and left for the birds. Today I had to learn the Tibeatn word for vulture.

When the shadows of this life have gone... I'll fly away.

Outside we wandered through the monastery, laughing, taking pictures, avoiding overly friendly grandfathers, dodging birds, catching our breath, remarking infinitely on the grandeur of the mountains and valley constantly in view, and were greeted by a playful dusting of a snow storm.
Inside she scrapped butter out of a plastic bag and dumped it into smelly, smoldering lamps, she tucked small cash notes into idols hands, she bowed, she chanted, she let her body lie flat on the floor before some metal buddhas perpetually riding on big metal horses. The monks droned their spells, changing only at the snap of the leaders fingers, they beat their drums, they listened to their mp3's, they drank their butter tea, they eyed the pale one. I asked my Father for wings...

Like a bird from prison bars has flown... I'll fly away.

Temples finished, the green hills covered with yak and wild flowers, the light play of snow, the blue overhead, Dolker's contagious laughter could have kept me right there. But when I stood precariously on the near vertical sandy mountain face and stared that particularly feisty yak with downward thrusted horns right in the face I realized I didn't have the right shoes or guts to spend even the night. So off we were down the mountain in search of a car back to Dolker's hometown, halfway back to Lhasa. A search that ended after nearly forty five minutes of standing on a dusty one laned street where young men reved motorcycles and one driver, who's driving turned out to be only half as crazy as his hair, swished red bull in his mouth and waited for more people to join us.

Just a few more weary days and then... I'll fly away.

"I'm not tired," I told Dolker minutes before we both fell sound asleep sitting straight up in the crowded, jostling van. When our exhausted bobbing heads could stand it no more we awoke, and just in time to ask Mr. My-Hair-Couldn't-Have-Been-Craizer-If-I'd-Tried to drop us off at her sister's tea house. A welcome retreat for two, nearly half starved, sleepy, travelers. The only items on the menu were tea and noodles. Three kinds of tea, black, butter, and sweet, two kinds of noodles... which, after trying both, tasted uncannily the same. We chatted with her mother, a fat droopy eyed woman with few teeth but the same contagious laugh, her sister, her brother, and her sister's daughter. I insisted on taking a family photo, they insisted that I include myself in it.

To a land where joy will never end... I'll fly away.

A herd of piglets caused havoc in the nearby ditch as we pulled away. Two vans later we had bounced meandered our way back to Lhasa. It was dark by the time I had biked like the little engine that could back up the mountain to my school. A student's tap at the door minutes after arrival back bestowed all of the joys of her mother's home cooked bread on my next few days. A phone call from a monk who's been away traveling for about a month hinted at long teas and too many pictures to come. I did some last minute preparations for tomorrow's class and wondered if my Father hadn't in fact given me those wings I asked for...

Fly.

A two Droma day...

Living can get predictable, it's the wandering I love...

That, and the way that somehow the wandering finds you in the midst of the predictable.

It felt a little like summer break from middle school years of yore. When I ended my morning class, it was all I could do to not dance back to the apartment. Six straight days of teaching finally over and a break at hand. Sun warm on my face, breeze slight blowing crispy yellow leaves across the uneven pavement, nothing to do but check the mail.

Which, predictably, I did.

Only to find a wrinkled, nearly soft, slip of paper declaring my mother's package had arrived. I glanced at my watch... less than an hour before the post office closed for the week long holiday.

In unthinking haste, I grabbed my wallet and my keys, raced across campus, banged on the door of the bus pulling away from our school gate... then sat, stomach churning as the bus proceeded in the slowest possible fashion to downtown... leaped off at the nearest stop, wiggled through rivers of pilgrims, played frogger through noisy traffic, rounded the corner, jumped over the steps, and breathlessly handed my package slip to the girl at the counter. Who also glanced at her watch... but I had made it.

So box in hand I causally flagged down the bus rounding the corner. Packed. I sighed and squeezed up near the front and wished that the small shy Tibetan girl would just move her bag a few inches so that I could sit on the stained mat covering the low front of the bus. I muttered something about too many people in English and she politely said, sorry, and moved her bag. Are you a tourist, a student, or a teacher? she asked. I'm a teacher, and you? I'm a student. Where? At the blind school. Shocked, I ducked my head to glance under her too low cap and realized that the reason she hadn't moved her bag when I got on was because she didn't know that I'd gotten on. She couldn't see hardly anything at all.

And so the wandering found me on a crowded, butter smelling bus and I met Droma.

As the bus chugged-gasped along we shared phone numbers and agreed to have tea at the earliest opportunity.

Later that day a phone call invited me to a banquet and canceled my afternoon class to my inescapable joy. In celebration, I dragged a blanket and a glass of iced tea outside to accompany me as I read a book in the sun and wished that the rest of my days could be spent just like that.

But it wasn't to be. There were banquets to attend.

Arrival was predictably far too early and I spent about half an hour milling around a hotel parking lot trying not to look as out of place as I felt. Come to find out there was a reason for feeling such as there were only nine other foreigners invited to the annual Lhasa city foreign workers banquet this year. I sighed, another long hour of random foods and too much toasting as my ears bleed from the terribly loud speakers. Everyone in China is at least partially deaf.

Eventually, I sat at my assigned seat at my table numbered seven, conveniently located squarely behind a pole so as to block anyone's knowledge that I had actually showed up. I chatted with one foreigner to my right about the odd array of foods, made a game of getting the man sitting diagonal to me to smile, discretely counted the number of pictures the man directly across from me took of himself posing holding a wine glass (17), stood up and sat down about a dozen times, dished out soupy radishes for my table mates, and tried to avoid getting wine spilled on me.

To my left sat our translator, a slim Tibetan woman with a patient face, who was quite obviously bored.

And so the wandering found me in a gaudily decorated banquet hall with too much wasted food where I was forced to be and I met my second Droma of the day.

I know you won't be surprised when I tell you that within a few exchanges we had shared phone numbers and agreed to meet for tea at the earliest opportunity.

Buses and banquets and all manner of predictable things of life and then the Spirit wanders through and it becomes an exquisite, two Droma, day.

Class 09

They don't care.

And it's not just the book that they don't care about, or the lesson, or the topic, or the grammar point I'm writing on the board because of the hundredth mistake they've made with it... They don't even care about themselves. I thought at precisely 11:56 this morning.

They are the dirtiest group of students I've ever had, clothes unwashed and soiled hair, they sleep and fidget their way through class, smoke and scream their way through the break, and can't be bothered to so much as glance at their books much less take notes from the board by the second half of class. The only question they have for me is in regards to whether they have my permission to leave early. Yes, just go, if everyone leaves early then I can to.

The moment I knew I was defeated was when I chose to look at my watch rather than their constantly vacant visages and debated if I could legitimately end the class twenty-five minutes early. The truth was it had already ended.

I walked in seeping with joyful residue from an awesome yesterday, a pumpkin scone success story for breakfast, and a good prior class, and left feeling like someone had scraped my insides out with a rusty spoon and then beat me with it until my head throbbed.

My headache lingered the rest of the afternoon, through a lunch with students who I loved so much and was so grateful for their contrast to the other class that it could have been heaven, though a mountain of copies to be made at the copy shop down the street where they never charge me full price, lingered through my petition for grace when I saw that one of the beggar children I consider my own bawling on the street corner one shoe off. But by the time those things had passed my head-heart ache was threatening to become a real problem.

A real problem met head on when the very class who had successfully stolen my joy was lined up near the school gate, shouting my name and begging me to accompany them to some dance competition. It would have been too easy for me to refuse. So, of course, and as proof of my slightly psychotic tendencies, I didn't.

I hopped on the bus and by the time we had arrived at the intended location my bag had become a deposit for at least a dozen cell phones and mp3 players weighing so much I had to carry it as one would a package. We walked into the auditorium, up the stairs, over to some bleachers where immediately the class dispersed and I was left sitting with about six of the thirty-two students I had come with. The terrible dancing, pounding repetitive song clips, and microphone crackling Chinese was doing nothing for my headache, nor was the sight of students from this class sneaking out slowly one by one. I asked the student next to me if she liked dancing. No, she replied, I like sleeping and drinking beer.

Finally, it ended, the remaining students materialized out of no where, cell phones were given back to their owners and we crammed onto a bus headed back to our school. I felt sick but was still hopeful for some positive result. On the bus, their singing overpowered the blaring radio and we sputtered through the school gate as they were screaming the English alphabet song to an acute combination of my confusion and amusement.

Back at the apartment with heavy metal door safely shut tight behind me, I sank and my headache intensified dramatically upon the realization that I was no farther along at understanding or reaching out to this class than I had been before a techo song about cowgirls got stuck in my head.

What do they care about?

Oh my bola... we've reached our final destination.

When the minivan, which had been accidentally dropping packages out of the back door most of the way there, finally stopped we stepped out into the haze of tire and street dust and stared up at the huge, freshly painted gate declaring the birthplace of the famous Tibetan king: Songtsen Gampo. We knew we had reached our final destination.

But really we hadn't. Instead we walked through the gate and into the small deserted town and spoke with the only two gentlemen for miles. Oh you want to see his birthplace... you're going to need a car. My student suggested we take out a loan.

So about a dozen barley fields, an uncountable number of yaks, one short and scary tractor ride, one grandmother watching cows, one minuscule town composed of one tea house and one police station, maybe a hundred pictures, the greenest mountains and the bluest sky you've ever seen, and about six kilometers later we showed up at a building that was perhaps the only one built within the last century we'd seen all day. At last, our final destination.

The only incident marking that time of note was when one student proceeded to proudly show of his new movie star sunglasses only to have the left lens pop out and land on the street to his wild exclamation of "oh my mother!" The mountains chortled with green laughter and the stream nearby went wild with giggles and the yaks raised their heads to guffaw and I had to sit down because I was laughing too hard to stand. And how much were those glasses? chirped my other student, one yuan?

Once inside our final destination, the elaborately painted memorial hall, like a jelly bean dropped in a sandbox, we realized that maybe it wasn't our final destination after all. Just a nearly empty building with a few extremely amusing life size replicas of important events from the king's life which my students enjoyed interacting with immensely. After we had climbed to the roof and surveyed the courtyard, in which stood only some weeds and a few odd mud bricks, from every possible angle we went back out to see what else there was to do. And to find a new final destination.

Turns out there was nothing to do. Everyone in the surrounding village was hard at work harvesting barley and though they said that there were many tea houses and many cars that could take us back we never did see any of them. We decided that the top of a hill would become our final destination and we climbed up up up past tiny purple flowers, flocks of chickens, and matted prayer flags to have a rest. The breeze was light but didn't conceal the sure signs of sunburn to come, and the crisp white clouds moved across the shocking blue sky like a circus train of wild contorting animals and disappeared over the green mountain peaks. I was content for this to be my final destination.

But it wasn't long before "oh my bola" my students were hungry and so we set off in search of a tea house final destination. Back through the fields, over the streams, past the stacks of harvested barley to the only tea house there was anywhere in the valley. Lunch, simple and predictable, sunflower seeds covered the floor, my students quizzed me with English pronunciation questions and we grew to realize that this could no more be our final destination than the memorial hall was. We needed to get back to the main road and my student again suggested we take out a loan. To which my other student wondered who would give a loan to someone who could only afford one yuan sunglasses.

Bellies full and sky still bright we set off again for our final destination... which of course would only be temporary since what we really wanted was a bus back to Lhasa. The grandmother tending cows remained exactly where we had left her that morning and since she was the only person we had seen that afternoon we decided to enlist her to take our photo. Crippled hands numbly clutched my camera and she looked right at us and grinned toothlessly as she proceeded to take about a dozen pictures of the ground near her feet. The one picture she managed to get of us reveals a scene where laugher cannot be controlled and after which we had to have a rest just to catch our breath. Maybe such a state of fierce hilarity should have been our final destination.

Of course it wasn't. So we skipped and sang and laughed in the breeze until we reached the deceptively large front gate which we had first mistaken for our final destination. A snack of some apples as we waited on the stoney streetside in the "oh my bola it's hot" sun for a bus, car, truck, donkey, anything heading back to Lhasa revealed our true weariness. By the time the large long distance bus pulled up with only two seats available we were happy to squeeze three into them and call the bus our final destination.

Back in Lhasa, a bright valley surrounded by sheets of rain, we ate a dinner of greasy noodles and one student insisted on a summary of our trip. This is the second trip of my life, he started, Ms. Kelly you were also there for the first. I think it is very happy. But next time we should do some more research.

Why?

We didn't know anything about our final destination. It could have been disappointing.

Which is when it dawned on me: yes, indeed it does pay to know something of our final destination.

Visions of a kingdom with only Glory as its light danced in my dreams that night... perhaps it did for those students too.