I saw him!

Wow, what a weekend...It's been a while since I last posted, and a lot has happened so I'll do my best to sum up the past few whirlwind days.

Friday: Skipped my placement, and went to the Tibetan Children's Village to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama give a speech to the Tibetan youth in the area. What a crazy and amazing experience! I actually got to see and hear the Dalai Lama speak only 20 minutes from his home in exile. It was really, really inspiring, and has definitely made the top of the list of awesome things I've experienced. I guess you could say that it just put a lot into perspective as far as how lucky and blessed I am. After that, myself and three other girls left for Amritsar, in the state of Punjab, which is about three hours away. It's sort of the Mecca of the Sikh religion, and I was really looking forward to getting out and seeing the sights.

Saturday: Got up at about 3:15 a.m. to go see the Golden Temple, which is the most religious Sikh temple in all of India. The reason why we chose to arrive so early was for two reasons. First of all, there is an elaborate and extremely interesting ceremony that takes place at 4:30 a.m. which involves "waking up" the holy scripture. It was pretty amazing to witness, with all the chanting, praying, and absolute reverence. The temple itself was absolutely gorgeous, completely adorned in over 1,000 pounds of gold. Getting inside was a bit of a hassle as there were tons of people there, even at such an early time, but it was totally worth the wait. After that we stayed to watch the sunrise, which was our second reason for leaving so early. The playing of the light on the Golden temple is something completely indescribable. So around 7 a.m. we went back to our hotel, and had breakfast and then slept until about noon, after which we woke up and went for lunch. After lunch, we headed about a half hour west to the Pakistan-India border, which every day has a huge and extravagant ceremony to close the border between the two countries. The best way to describe it was sort of like a pep rally on crack - children dancing in the streets, singing, playing Indian music, chanting, and so much more. It was a pretty amazing and indescribable event - especially with the intolerable heat of the late afternoon. Another kind of strange thing was seeing the festive and uplifted Indians in comparison to the somber and serious Pakistani people, who were additionally seperated in the bleachers by gender, with the men outnumbering the burka-clad women by a large margin. All in all, it was a really great but obviously tiring day, and by about 9:30 we were ready to just order room service and call it a day.

Sunday: Pretty much a calm day, driving back to Dharamsala and then unpacking and getting ready for work the next day.

Today, we all went off to our placements in the morning, and then after lunch had a really, really eye-opening and interesting lecture with a woman named Jaya who created an NGO in Delhi that works with women in the slums. After about 3 hours of discussion I felt so informed! We are also currently in the process of planning out our last week to travel...Currently, its looking like we will spend a few days in Delhi, then take a train to the Taj Mahal for a day, and then fly to Rajasthan to see Jaipur, which is apparently a city you can't miss. Sounds exciting! All in all, this experience has been just surreal - from seeing the Dalai Lama to the border closing ceremony....wow, just wow.