waking up to darjeeling

All right, here's the deal. I got two photos this morning that I will post asap, but then my camera died. Just died. The shutter will not open. I am honestly so, so mad, but what are you going to do? Nothin. So, it's fine. I'll see if I can find a repair shop, or a disposable camera somewhere.... but we'll see. It sucks, but it's just a camera and they are just photos. Blah.

Anyway, that's unimportant but not really because of all the "where are the pictures" talk. I'm sorry I don't post pictures, but it would mean I would be spending about one extra hour on the internet and I'm not interested in that really. These connections are too slow!

On a lighter and happier note: I woke up this morning to the site of the Kanchenjunga mountain range, shrouded in pink mist, outside my hotel window. The clouds parted (apparently for the first time in a week) and I could see the whole town and above, perched in a cloud, were the white peaks of the Himalayas. Truly beautiful and motivating. So, at 6 am I was up and rarring to go, but there's really nothing to do! It's 9 am now, so I'm going to venture to the market and try to fix my camera. We'll see what happens.

Last night I ended up celebrating Thanksgiving with a Slovakian, a Hungarian, and a Frenchman. I imposed myself on them, and bought them a feast of chowmein, tibetan bread with honey, and spring rolls. We feasted and drank some disgusting Indian beer (not Kingfisher), and laughed about how the Slovakian thought that the "turkey" we had at Thanksgiving was actually a Turk. Really? That doesn't even make sense. But here he was, picturing a bunch of fat, hungry Americans eating squash with a little token Turk visitor. Ah, the hilarity of miscommunication. I had fun listening to them speak in battered English, and I even got to practice some Spanish and French because we could all speak bits of those languages. It was very fun.

I went to sleep under 4 blankets and woke up sweating. I'm good with cold. It helps me sleep, it helps me wake up, it just generally puts me in a good mood.

The air is fresh here. Fresh and clean and it smells like real air, not like pollution. It's thin, too. I think I'm about 7,000 feet up? Something to that degree. Not too high, but for a sea-level dweller like myself it is a bit of a shock.

Much love, sorry about the camera shizz.