Sunday, August 8, 2010

Inauspicious return

So, it's been an absurd amount of time since I last blogged. My apologies. There have been some truly interesting things going on, our summer-break backpacking trip, touched on briefly by Zeb being the most prominent. As of now, I have a cold, one and a half cats, a new temporary roommate, and a cup of fermented millet-buckwheat juice called tong-ba. His Majesty the Fifth Dragon King is coming to visit the school on Monday, and we've spent the majority of the previous week preparing for it.

Teaching is as frustrating and unrewarding as ever. More, perhaps. Still, I'm at peace, largely due to a slowly but consistently increasing interest in Buddhist ideology. I am far from practicing--meditation still baffles me--but more than anything I have found that the nuances of Buddhist thought support and reinforce ideas that I have always found to be fundamentally true. Reading and talking about Buddhism has just made me think more about them, and about myself. In the process, I think I am starting to strengthen some of my good habits and begin the long journey towards eliminating the many bad ones. While I may not stay here for the rest of my life, I hope I carry with me forever the emphasis on introspection and self-improvement created not only by Buddhism but simply by living in such a remote and timeless place.

More substantive (and more entertaining) blogging coming, I swear.

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