Cold and dirty, but alive in Yushu

Arrived in Yushu on Saturday morning, after 15 of the longest hours of my life on an overnight bus. You would think that packing us in like steamed dumplings (there are three rows of bunk 'beds,' tiny platforms about one-and-a-half feet wide, and the head area inclines, so the next person's lower legs slide underneath you) would keep the ride warm, but when I finally crawled out from under six blankets in the morning, the windows were iced over from the inside. I'm told the scenery is beautiful, though.

I was not destined to warm up any time soon. Turns out the electricity at Brendan's house, where I'm staying, is broken. That means no heat, except for a tiny yak stove that I am not currently getting along with (although I no longer mind the human-high pile of yak dung in the corner of one of the rooms), and no light past 6:30 or so. So I sleep in my down jacket, long underwear, jeans, gloves and a scarf under three blankets, a sleeping bag, some kind of fur thing and a pile of my sweaters. The school says its on their radar, but the electrician is 'busy.' So one of my students came over to play with some live wires and see what he could do. At last he shrugged and announced that he believes there is a "serious problem."

Not that I was expecting the Ritz. I knew there was no running water, I just didn't quite realize what that would mean at 7 a.m. when you want to wash your face. And I knew that Brendan had an outhouse, I just didn't realize that meant two boards a foot off the ground in a corner of the yard. On the bright side, I haven't missed showering as much as I thought I would, since showering would require undressing, and I don't even like to take off my fur boots when I go to sleep at night. The Tibetans are not big bathers, and I now have no problem understanding why.

And despite all this, I am in love with Yushu.

More on that later.