a day off!

yesterday we spent another day down in daramshala helping out jamyang. it’s weird, i’ve actually hardly ever worked w/ microsoft access, and dont know too much about it. actually, i was a bit worried that i wouldnt be able to actually do the things that jamyang needed, but after a bit of tinkering around, i finally figured everything out. he ended up not really needing any more computer help for now, so between now and tuesday we have two “days off”. on tuesday we’re starting a week-long course on buddhism and meditation, two things that i’ve been sorta interested in all of my life, but have never really put any research into. actually, i remember way back in the day, my best friend and i decided that we would start meditating… i think that ended up lasting less than a week before we gave up, heh.

anyways, since we had the day off, we decided to walk around the mountains between several of the small villages up here. it was a really nice walk.. very peaceful and quiet with incredible views all around. it’s been raining like crazy lately, so a lot of the roads are a muddy mess, but they’re still decent. we walked past small buildings built barely hanging on to the sides of the mountain, tibetan prayer flags hanging in between trees and other structures, and even monkeys.

it turned out that there were tons of monkeys up there scurrying about, eating food out of dumpsters, and jumping from tree to tree. i walked up to take a phhoto of one that was eating garbage. i walked closer and closer hoping to get a good shot… when the monkey attacked me!! all of a sudden it made a squawk and lunged towards me with an angry expression on it’s face! i jumped back. it then backed up and then lunged towards me again! it landed jus a few feet in front of me, and i started swinging my umbrella in front of me to keep it from getting to me. it ended up lunging a me 3 times total, with me frantically swinging the umbrella in fear. finally the monkey gave up and scampered off. phew!!

it looks angry, eh?

tibetan prayer flags

the rest of the walk was pretty uneventful other than us spotting some odd looking creature. it kind of looked like a ferret or something. maybe a mongoose?

*v