A few thoughts

Life is slowly settling in here, if you can call living in exile and in a closet, in a world where everyone knows you're foreign, settling in. A schedule is really nice to have. We have class from 9-5 everyday, with meditation class starting on wednesday morning. It is being taught by an American monk, so that translations of the Buddhism will come across. So keep an eye out for thoughts on my first meditation experience. I have a hard time even quieting my mind, so i think active silence is going to be extremely difficult.

My homestay mom still feeds me way too much food and the diet of starch and the 4 veggies is getting old. Apparently, all Tibetan food only involves the 4 veggies: potatoes, red onion, cabbage and a tomato-like thing (i'm sure its a tomato, but its kinda hard, not really squishy). For breakfast, an "omelet" with red onion (not cooked) and tomato. For dinner, some starch with the veggies. I'm having massive cravings for an actual salad, but lettuce isn't always safe to eat here, so my chances of one are slim until im back in Delhi. I'm also finding that im slightly addicted to veg momo's, which are a lot like steamed dumplings.

Its getting dark, which means my homestay mom will start calling the entire town in about 1/2 hour if im not home soon, but i'd like to give a few thoughts on life in exile and my initial observations:

Kashmiri men are creepy. You should avoid them at all cost. Especially if they invite you back to their "shop" for tea.
Indian beggers come from all over to McLeod Ganj because of the number of foreigners here. Evidently they make more than most Tibetans. They also have lots of tricks up their sleeves, like asking not for money but for you to buy milk for their baby (they all have babies). Milk is expensive, and if you do buy it, they usually sell it back to the shop, marked up.
There are no Tibetan beggars. As a Tibetan woman said, "we have no sympathy for them, we tell them get a job. because life is hard for all of us, we have all gone through the same things, and therefore no one gets it easy."
Life in exile is definitely hard, which i knew, but its hard to fathom until you're actually here. People come in from Tibet all the time, about 3,000 a year, and really struggle to make a living. They definitely make-do and no one really knows for how long they will have to. They say life in TAR might actually be better in terms of quality of living but being occupied and having your culture destroyed is certainly not worth some material goods.
Young Tibetan men are constantly on the prowl for foreign women to marry.
There is an interesting balance between modern and traditional, which definitely plays out in the monks. Monks generally are the majority in internet cafes, they all have cell phones and they are all way more connected to the outside world than i am.
The tibetan language is really hard, but the written is so cool. Its beautiful to write and has remained the same since the 7th century. Today we "read" (we dont know what they mean, but we can sound them out) texts on walls in monasteries built in 910. pretty sweet. I suck at the oral though, i can't even adequetely pronounce the word for "I" so that tells you where i am :-).

More to come for sure, especially now that the daily life is settling in, ill have much more on observations. His Holiness the Dalai Lama starts his teachings soon, which we are going to the first one. No one knows exactly when yet, as schedules over here are very arbitrary. For example, the bus schedule has things like this: "McLeod Ganj to Delhi: Morning" Morning can mean 7:30 or 11:45. you should just hang out until it comes. Until then, khaleh shub.