Fiberglass

Okay, so i finally broke down and got a fiberglass cast on my leg.  I found myself suddenly hearing way too many horror stories about poorly healed ankles. Wanna sign my cast?

It's been a while...

I know, it's been a while since my last blog. How many blogs have i read that started out like that? Instead of catching up with everything that's happened since last year, I'm just gonna start with the present. Because it is a precious gift.

School just ended at RYI and things have mellowed out a bit. Most of the students have already left for the summer. I, myself will be leaving in May to attend my brother's wedding in Alaska. I'm really looking forward to it. It will be a long flight but i have a two day lay over in Bangkok to make the flight worth while. Bangkok is always a good time. Maybe i can do a little shopping, and even visit a monastery up north.

I think I've even found a way to get bumped up into business class... I've broken my ankle : ) . Last Friday night i was rough housing with some of the shedra students and i tripped. My ankle then buckled and popped, and i fell suddenly to the ground. It gave me an entirely new perspective, as the stars were quite beautiful that evening. My ankle quickly became a deformed grapefruit in size and shape, and was exquisitely painful. I've since been x-rayed and have spoken to a Belgian Orthopedic. My tibia is fractured just above the ankle on the inside of my right foot. Doc says it may very well heal without a cast, but i will have to get another x-ray next week just to make sure. I'm hoping i can get by without one, 'cause a plaster cast just looks tacky at a wedding ; ) .

I'm really looking forward to seeing my two darling nieces and my super cool nephews. I haven't actually seen Kailey and Ethan since that cruise in the Caribbean a lifetime ago. They probably don't even remember me, but as their uncle, it is my job to ensure that they get into a little trouble now and again (sorry Gary and Cathy, but a job's a job).

Before i head out to Anchorage, i also intend to do a couple weeks of meditation retreat. That will be my real vacation. Speaking of retreat, Catherine is still in her five month retreat out in Pharping. She will finish up in June, a couple weeks after i get back. I was gonna do my retreat out in Pharping as well, but now with my ankle the way it is, i think i'll just do it at home in our shrine room. I finally bought that shrine everyone's been bugging me about not having. It's beautiful. 8' x 8', dark wood, nice carving. I'll try to get a photo of it online once i have it loaded up with all of our statues and texts. I'm really happy with it.

Enough for now. Leave me a comment to let me know what a slacker blogger i've been.

Love, Ger

RYI Summer Program

Since June 2009, we’ve been working hard. Busy days. Catherine is teaching two Tibetan language classes and running our Translator Training program, while I have been helping students find homes, Tibetan homestays, health and healing. From mid-June to mid-July I taught a meditation course at eight in the morning to the Buddhist Study Program students. It was fun, and centered around shamata, or sitting exercises in concentration and becoming calm (which are the foundation of meditation), as well as guided meditations on immeasurable loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The twelve or so students who were in the class seemed to enjoy it, and even though I have no experience in teaching, I had fun. It was a good way for them to start a day of more complicated Buddhist philosophy and logic.

I’ve also been organizing various field trips, from hikes and bus rides to distant monasteries and tours of cultural centers of Kathmandu, like Patan, to movie nights and Fourth of July parties. And, as usual, I’ve been doing my fair share of counseling students through the ups and downs of their brief time in Kathmandu.

These days Catherine and I end most of our days feeling exhausted. Of course some of that is due to the muggy, oppressive heat. You sweat and it just sticks to you all day. Nothing like New Mexico. I miss dry heat. Dry heat and good beer.

Vacation in Thailand- May 2009

Wow, I’ve been so busy of late. Here’s an over view of our last few months. Last May Catherine and I flew to Thailand for three weeks. It was heavenly. Cather was asked last minute to translate for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche in Malaysia just before our vacation, so she met me in Bangkok. My first night there (the day before Catherine arrived) I met up with some old friends from Nepal, James Hopkins (Virginia), Andy Kilchmann (Swizterland), and Jonas Doctor (Denmark). We went out for dinner together at street diner/café with a live local rock band pounding away inside, and afterwards we all went out for luxurious hour-long Thai foot massages. I stayed the night in a dinky little dive of a hotel near Kao San Road. The next day I met James and some friends of his for lunch at the Jim Thompson house/museum and then sped off to meet Catherine in town and take her to an expensive hotel in China Town which I managed to get at a 50-60% discount online at Last Minute Deals. After a night of luxury, we caught an overnight train to Surat Thani in the south, eating Dunkin’ Donuts and sandwiches. In Surat Thani we took a bus to the pier and boarded our ferry to Koh Phangan, me drinking good Thai beer all the way. We opted to stay on one of the more remote beaches on the island, and since it was off season, we had a mile of pristine white sandy beach mostly to ourselves.

I spent mornings kayaking in the bay and would meet Catherine for breakfast around 9am. We even found this great little beachfront restaurant called the Dolphin where I could order lox on French bread and Catherine could have fruit, yoghurt and muesli for breakfast. We often strolled around after breakfast, later hid from the midday sun, and in the afternoons would drink beer and read on the beach or in a hammock on the porch of our simple thatch-roofed bungalow. And thus we spend two weeks, sometimes tossing a Frisbee, sometimes sitting at the bar, sometimes swimming in the bay. One day we even rented a little Thai power boat and went snorkeling, explored hidden waterfalls and saw over ¼ of the island’s coast. My favorite part was definitely kayaking up and down the coast in the early mornings and exploring a little three –pineapple-tree island.

For the last week of our vacation, we ferried down to Koh Samui, where our friends, Greg and Anne Whiteside, gave us a one week stay at their extremely posh tropical summer home on the southern coast of the island. There we relaxed in air conditioned comfort, took in the awesome view, and occasionally rode in to town on a rented motorbike to pick up groceries and amazing Thai food at a local market in Lamai.

Finally at the end of our trip, Catherine and I Flew back to Bangkok. Catherine had to fly back to Malaysia immediately to translate for Chokling Rinpoche. I, however, had a few days left in BKK and spent them making friends with locals. Lat, a taxi driver, said he felt some kind of a connection with me and invited me to meet his family in the Bangkok suburbs and to stay with them. It sounded fun, so I accepted. They called all their friends over for two nights in a row and we had a seafood and pork BBQ. Boom, Lat’s wife, was an amazing cook and made countless spicy home-style Thai dishes for me to burn my mouth up on while Lat manned the open fire BBQ (as it should be). During the day Lat drove me all around Bangkok on his motorbike, showing me the Royal Palace which I have visited once before with my Dad (George), plus special shrine rooms that were only for the King and his ministers (Lat had a friend who worked for Royal Crown Property Management and who possessed a large ring of magical keys). I had such a fun time with them. My new friends even drove two cars to the airport to see me off. What a sweet bunch of people.

And then I re-entered the Kathmandu Grind.

Kathmandu BBQ!

I would just like to announce that I recently bought a little BBQ grill and i am having a blast with it.  Last month Catherine and I invited Mort and Fuki and Arthur over for some grilled veggies.  We made colorful and delicious shish-kabobs, after which Mort commandeered the grill for a batch of chicken wings soaked in various mouth-watering marinades.  We must allow adults their toys as well.

Honeymoon in Vietnam

I suppose this is a little late in coming, but here are some pictures from our Honeymoon in Vietnam last December and January. We had a good time. First we flew into Hanoi in the north via Bangkok and found it to be colder that we expected and had to buy Catherine a coat. We roamed around Hanoi for a couple days and were slightly put off by the blocky communist architecture and war monuments depicting soldiers firing AK47's. 

Next we travelled east to Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island. We hired a large cruising junk with several other tourists and boated around these amazing limestone islands that rose straight out of the water, exposing shear cliff faces. There were thousands of these islands and we just sailed between them all.  It was a two night/three day tour. The first night we stayed on the junk and on the second we celebrated Christmas in a luxury Hotel. During the second day of our Ha Long trip, our guides took us on a delightful bicycle tour of one of the islands, and later that day we went sea kayaking through a hole in a cliff and found ourselves in a quiet, enclosed salt water lake. It was really beautiful.  Possibly the most worthwhile trip you could take in the north.

Afterwards, Catherine and I took both trains and buses south down the coast, stopping in various scenic towns and resorts along the way. Hoi An in particular had escaped the bombing of the American War and was very picturesque, with beautiful temples, a wide river through town, excellent restaurants, and many colorful tailor shops. I ended up having a pair of pants and a jade-green silken robe made, and Catherine had them make her a pair of pants, an exquisite black and red traditional Vietnamese dress, a bright red jacket and a pair of cute brown leather shoes. Tailoring in Hoi An turned out to be addictive. 

Of the other places we stayed, the north end of Mui Ne Beach was most note worthy. Quiet with a busier beach community to the south and beautiful clean beaches. We spent a lot of time drinking beer and lying in hammocks on the beach. And at the end of our trip, we flew out from Saigon (Ho Chi Min City), stayed a couple days in Bangkok which is always nice, and finally flew back home to Kathmandu.

I want to help the environment, but it's not always clear how to do so from KTM.

I suppose I'm fairly worried about the environment, but there just doesn't seem like there is a lot i can do from Kathmandu. I use energy-saving lights and we recently bought this little scooter that gets great gas mileage (if only gas were consistently available in KTM).

We have solar hot water, which is very common in KTM simply because it's cheaper that gas or electric heating, but we also have on-demand gas heating for the shower. Interesting to note is that these days the average Nepali in Kathmandu often has both solar heated water and electric solar panels on his roof or on the ledge outside the house. So Kathmandu is definitely going green, but not by choice. The government shuts off power to all parts of Kathmandu in a 16 hour a day load shedding schedule, leaving residents with only 8 hours of electricity a day. We broke down and bought a back up battery and power inverter. Not as environmentally friendly, but more dependable.

I also try not to litter, but it seems like a totally futile pursuit in such a garbage filled part of the world. I once asked a Khenpo (monk Professor), "Paltrul Rinpoche said sexual misconduct results in being reborn or having to live in very dirty places filled with excrement, while Dakpo Rinpoche said it results in being reborn in a very dusty place. Since Kathmandu is VERY dusty and you can see cow, dog, and human shit EVERYWHERE, does that mean we have all committed sexual misconduct in past lives?" The khenpo replied that Kathmandu was only dirty because of "economics" and was therefore exempt from the above statements. He went on to explain what a Holy city Kathmandu was, but i'm not sure i see this distinction of "economics." Dust is dust, and shit is shit.

I suppose using the outdoors as a toilet could be seen as a boon to the environment, tho, as it is a type of fertilizer. Just be careful not to step in it.