g'day mate

our weekend was incredibly fun. saturday evening we had a christmas drink at our neighbour’s place. chris invited some australian, american, spanish, danish, belgian and dutch friends and cooked us all a delicious dinner. we even had home made chocolate cake with strawberries, jummie! we talked and danced until 06.30 AM. it was great fun! on sunday, however, we did need lots and lots of coffee. wonder why…

it’s already been three weeks since marlous left. we definitely had some catching up to do. the first two days were spent talking and sharing ‘the latest news’. together we visited norbulinka, the dalai lama’s summer palace. in its high days it must have been an amazing place to live or visit, but nowadays, the atmosphere is rather sad. the palace is in ruins, the surrounding gardens are badly kept, and all the monks – and atmosphere – have gone. there were some beautiful temples and if you tried hard you could see the beauty of the place. shopping was also a favourite pastime. we walked the jokhang kora many times, just to see all the shops. and of course we had great dinners. marlous is a vegetarian and could eat her heart out in lhasa, because monks are not supposed to eat meat either. tofu kebab was our favourite, nice for us too because there were no surprises in the ‘meat’ (no intestines, no bones).

i started working on handicap international’s community based rehabilitation project. we have been preparing training for the local rehab workers to teach them to be more creative with the children in ‘day care’. in tibet children do not play, poverty makes them work on an early age. the rehab workers therefore lack creativity in developing games and activities. the children are all handicapped and with the rehab workers we will organise a ‘winter camp’ where developing abilities through playing is key.

to introduce ourselves in the cbr-project we started with a week of observations. we visited the community centre to meet the children and see what activities they are doing now. we also went on home visits outside lhasa, which were really interesting. i got to see how people live in tibet, mostly tibetans are nomads or farmers. on the outside houses are white, but on the inside the house are really colourful. most of them have murals and beautifully painted furniture. only, there is no heating. but there is an abundance of yak butter tea. i drank yak butter tea at every family we visited, as it is a custom to provide your guests with drinks. and typically asian, they keep filling up your cup. i had lots of fun, even when i had to go to the bathroom in rural tibet. first the translator showed me an outdoor toilet, a piece of land surrounded by a brick wall of about 20 centimeters. but luckily the family we were visiting had a toilet, the smallest room in the house, with a hole in the ground but no roof. thank buddha it does not rain much in tibet.

wednesday we are leaving for shanghai, where we will celebrate christmas together in a civilised environment. ten days without smelly people, disgusting public toilets, people who urinate and defecate on the streets, medieval butchers, ice cold restaurants and western food that makes us sick. how will we survive?

but we will be back for new year’s eve! so we can celebrate it in style, with our expat friends, on the roof of the world.