And the Adventure Begins

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(I'm really bad at coming up with titles for these so if anyone wants to help me with that please let me know.)

At some time today we will finally arrive in Lhasa. Again this morning we woke up to a sea of beauty that reminded me a lot of New Mexico. Now we're in a flat valley called Ke ke xi li (in Chinese). This place is very cold because the wind can flow straight over it so there are a lot of cold animals - yaks and animals tht appear to be like deer. There is a French man I met last night on the train who is from Paris but very nice and speaks good English. Near him is a woman from Tibet who speaks fairly good Chinese. The cabin where we're staying on the train is pressurized and has oxygen flow and yet some people still have headaches. My only question is why do they pressurize it? Doesn't that make it harder for us once we get there? The Tibetan woman taught me how to say thank you "Thoo jaychay" (spoken really fast) and Yak "yaa". It's kind of cool the Tibetan and English are the same on that one word (whereas the Chinese is really different).

The woman next to me who I played cards with yesterday is a medicine freak. She's got everything - Ibuprofen, Vitamin C, oxygen mask (which she plugs in and uses every now and again), cold medicines, cough medicines and even a thermometer which she uses at least once a day. I think it's a bit on the too much side. She spilled my tea all over my bag so I'm going to have to clean it and a couple other things once I get there.

It's pretty crazy the scenery here. Especially since you know the next time you'll see it is in a dream or a movie, magazine or book. You'll say to the person readin git. "I've been there" and they'll either not believe you or look at you with awe on their faces. More than likely the first option. You are the only one who can say to yourself "I've seen a yak, I've been to 6000 meters above sea level, I've lived on a train for 48 days" for even if others believe they cannot understand unless they've been there themselves.

The sky here is as blue as it could be and there are sheep and yaks roaming all over the place. But trying to take a picture of them is like trying to take a picture of dolphins and whales - you know they're there you just don't knw when they're going to come up. Along the way there are people waving to you all over the place for even if they hate the train being htere you're some of the first people they may have seen all day (it seems). The women look to be wearing Hindu type garb raising a gloved hand to wave.

Man, what a night! I got off the beauty train to .... ta da! No travel agent there waiting for me. Fortunately the French man I met on the train was there with a chinese man so we called a bunch of places trying to find who was to pick me up. Finally the Chinese guy's friend came and they all decided to take me into the city - as it was better than my waiting with the scam artists and they were going that way anyways. We finally caught up with the guy and the French man gave lme his card in case something else happened. The travel man apologized profusely (although I almost felt like slapping him - as did the Chinese guy's friends) and we took a taxi to my hotel - a fairly nice place. Now I just cleaned a bunch of my clothes and called Cam who got angry with me for asking where he was and put the phone over to Hui. Turns out the tour has no other foreigners and the guy running it tomorrow called to give the information in Chinese so tomorrow's going to be an interesting day.

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