Last night I had dinner at the hotel for the first time and it was pretty good. I ate with Breanna and Phuntsok. went to bed and ended up sleeping like 2 hrs. Today we had language class which I now officially hate - we blindly repeat things without knowing how to say them or sometimes what they even mean.

Ian voiced an excellent observation that I though myself was too crazy - that the Potala looks like the Titanic. Weird, I know, but in real life that's exactly what it evokes. Breanna and I had lunch at a cool restaurant in the Barkhor. Afterwards we went to the Drepung monastery and saw cool stuff. Took way too many pics and probably got sunburned. Awesome (though by the end of the trip my nose was falling off) I had so much fun though. And I exchanged money and now am slowly making my way back on foot, stopping to write in front of the potala. Beautiful.

After trudging back to the hotel I had a great dinner - tomato soup and grilled cheese. Kelly joined me, making me learn new tibetan verbs. Kristina came down and told us about this Tibetan boy in his little chupa, standing at the entrance of the potala. She described seeing the guard holding his belt above his head and striking the kid twice. Tears welled but he just stood there while other Tibetans tried to move him away. The guard was laughing in apparent enjoyment in his sick, twisted mind. People are evil - and that disturbs me more than the eternal, haunting image of a small boy being beaten by a cold-hearted chinese guard for standing there.