Sunday, June 3, 2012

Best day ever

I feel like I've been saying this every time I write a blog, but today was easily the best day of the trip so far. We finally arrived at Dharmasala yesterday which is where the Tibetan Government in exile and the Dali Lama are located. We woke up at 7am today to see the Dali Lama pass by on his way to give a teaching at a local school. We then waited outside the school in order to see him leave. He is exactly what you think of in your mind when one pictures the perfect Tibetan monk. He was constantly looking jovial and wore a smile on his face wider then mine, and that is pretty hard to do. At first I thought that the only thing that could take this trip from a 9 to a 10 was actually meeting the Dali Lama, but later on I figured out how wrong I was. We left for a school called Tong Len that helped take slum children out of the slums and educate them to become doctors, businessmen, etc. These kids were honestly some of the cutest and sweetest kids I have ever played with, the second we showed up they were constantly smiling and running up to us asking our names. I absolutely love kids and this was an incredibly heartwarming experience for me. I picked up every child I could find and spun them around or slung them over my shoulder. We then played an exciting match of football, which was convenient because I wore my Manchester United Jersey today. (Also It was the first time I've ran around and played a sport since breaking my leg in January.) Obviously my team won. However what really made today so special was just the faces of the kids as we were leaving, and the fact that they really did love having us there and were begging for us to come back sometime this week. Driving back to our hotel we got to witness one of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever seen, with the sun gently falling behind the Himalayan mountain range. This trip has been full of some of the best experiences of my life and I am not at all ready to see it end. Hopefully we do get to go back to Tong Len and play with those kids again, because I really can't imagine what could be better then the smiles on there faces.

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