The week after the inauguration, we were all a bit tired and out of sorts. By Monday I had a cold. Zoë went down with a low fever, Jeremy was desperate not to go to school. We let Jeremy stay home, but I still had to go to work, so he was out of sorts and neither he nor James was happy.
I canceled my tutorial hour (9:30-10:30) but classes were not to be canceled in case the vice-chancellor wanted to visit a class. Pema forgot (or didn’t register) that I had said I would need to go up the mountain at noon, so I was almost late. I was met by a delegation of students asking me to take only one hour of class time. I said they could have the second hour to prepare for presentations in whatever way made best sense to them. Horizontally, perhaps.
By the time we were headed down the mountain, the rains were torrential, and there was a double rainbow in the sky.
Thursday (late Wednesday night for her), Nat gave a guest lecture on the Victorians, which the students found very engaging—they also picked up her trick of using different font colors to communicate parts of a close reading of a passage, which greatly improved their presentations.
I started hiking up the mountain as a means of getting some exercise.
Food continues to be a central concern. We had hoped that the cloth bag of maida (white flour) would be a sustainable approach to storage, but unfortunately it tasted a little rancid, on the edge of mold. The plastic bag of atta (whole wheat) survived better over time.
And this is definitely chili season! Chilis drying everywhere—mostly on rooftops.
The prayer wheel in middle market is almost done with the renovations:
Friday evening, James ventured out to see the inter-hostel traditional dance competition. Many new kinds of dances! Dances with bows and arrows, dances with descending dragons (coming down on strings from the ceiling—that photo didn’t come out…).
Saturday, Jeremy came up to Yonphula with me and practiced film-making while I met with my students about their upcoming presentations.
Sunday, we watched people painting an iron roof and explored new routes up and down to our favorite walk.
Everywhere we turn, there seems to be another ritual construction, fending off bad karma…
Then Chencho brought us a squash—that thing is a squash?!—and we made her show us how to prepare it.