Journey to Town

Today is Sunday, which is my holiday from teaching at the monastery so I came into Kathmandu to get some errands done. I woke up early to get ready and to figure out how to get a bus into the city. I was met by my monk friend who was going into Kathmandu as well with 3 other monks. They were invited to one of the relatives of the rimpoche's to come to their house and pray. So I was happy to go into town with them because they could show me which bus to take. So we descended from the hill, me in my t-shirt and hiking boots, escorted by a group of 10 monks wearing maroon robes. It was quite funny walking through the town early in the morning. It must have been funny to see me, surrounded by 10 monks walking through this tiny village. The monks and I got on the bus in Sankhu and departed on our journey to Kathmandu. I was sitting by my monk friend and he asked if I wanted to listen to music. I said sure, and he got out his cell phone and started playing MP3s on his cell phone. I thought the whole thing was almost hilarious. 10 monks and I sitting on a rickety old bus, bellowing through the rolling green hills and rice fields of the Nepalese countryside, a most medieval sight, listening to dancy technoish MP3's on a monk's very high tech cell phone. The whole thing was comical. I loved it! Once we got into town the monks got off the bus to go to the house they were invited to pray in. It was a wonderful early morning journey.

PS. Sunday is my day off, so I will use Sundays to come into the city to catch up on correspondence. There is no internet, to my knowledge, in the town of Sankhu or anywhere near it, so I will have to be limited to responding to emails on Sundays as this will be the only time I will have internet access while I am teaching. So I'm sorry if it takes a while!
Namaste!
-Leah