TALK: The Green Mountain College Blog

So… back from Tibet. An absolutely amazing experience. It was nothing I expected it to be, and absolutely everything I needed it to be.

Everyone has expectations. It’s a natural human tendency to try to predict the possible outcomes of tomorrow before it arrives. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that humans hate surprises, hate being caught completely off guard, and that is why we devote so much time to trying to figure out what’s around the corner.

And this was how it was for many of us who decided to go to Tibet. At the very beginning, we all had expectations for the places we were going and the adventure we were about to take. After the first two days, however, I feel that most of us simply let go— we stopped predicting and started living in the moment—we stopped tentatively walking and simply plunged into a two week Tibetan free fall. Was it because we somehow felt disappointed with the expectations we had created? No. It was because at that point we realized we had stumbled into a rabbit hole, and that any expectation we might entertain was from a completely Western and/or American perspective. We were on the other side of the globe. These types of expectations would just not do.

And after a while, some of us even started changing, slowly becoming like the locals, as we traveled further and further into the Tibetan countryside and into a very very different reality.

Hahaha. I love that picture.

Let’s begin with the beginning. July 3rd 9pm. My friends Brent, Nia and Becky pick me up from the Ainsworth household. I had spent the day trying to get enough sleep to survive the nocturnal bus ride I was about to take, but that only amounted to about three hours of sleep. I was too nervous. Way too nervous. I was about to go on the adventure of a lifetime. Sleep just seemed irrelevant.

At first, I had planned on taking the 7am bus to NYC, but after discussing this with my professor, I realized that he was right. I needed to take an earlier bus so that I would get to the JFK on time with the rest of the group. Although it was possible that I could make it on the 7am bus, it was cutting it close. So I switched bus carriers and found a bus that left Boston at 2am. That’s right. 2am.

After Becky, Brent, and Nia picked me up, we drove to meet up with Toby, our main man and navigator for our sojourn. Toby and I discussed directions for a while, then we went to the gas station to stock up on coffee, gas, and other necessary items. We began the trip around 11pm, with enough time to make it to Boston an hour early as the bus provider suggested. And so we were off.

My friends were very talkative the entire time. They had lots of nervous energy, maybe even more than I had (at least outwardly). I was sort of quiet. Sort of scared. I had to make the bus in Boston at 2 (thank goodness for manly looking friends and groups!) Then I would have to navigate Port Authority in NYC at 9am to find the bus that would take me across the city to the JFK (unfortunately the only bus that left earlier than 7am also made several stops on the way to NYC, so it would be a 7 hour bus ride. What fun.) After taking this hour bus ride across NYC, I would then have to navigate an 11gate airport to find my professor, as he would be the only member of the group at the airport at such an early hour (10ish or so). I would not only have to do all of this by myself, I would have to do it running on as much sleep as I could get on a public bus and/or on the three hours of sleep I had managed to nab the day before. Yes. I was scared. My friends were talkative. We all had a lot of nervous energy.

Although navigating Boston has never been a strong point for any of us, we finally made it to South Station, and with plenty of time to spare. My friends hung around to wait for the bus with me, which I found very nice of them. After half an hour or so, the bus started boarding. My friends held up the line to give me a group hug before the bus driver took my ticket, which was an act filled with an odd mixture of absolute embarrassment and total necessity. I think Nia was crying as I boarded the bus. I just told myself I was tired and hoped I would make it back.

The bus ride was long. I managed a few winks of sleep, but not very much. I kept considering NYC. I kept considering Tibet. I watched the sunrise in New Haven Connecticut that morning. It was all pinks and yellows and oranges splashed across the sky and reflected in the water. It was phenomenal. I was listening to this new band that I’ve just gotten into called Explosions in the Sky and one of the most uplifting songs on the cd came on just as the first rays of true sun popped over the horizon. I felt that somehow this was a good omen for my trip and found myself smiling, rather than worried, for a while.

Got into New York. Was so exhausted I could hardly string together two comprehensible sentences. I had to ask four different people directions on how to get to the buses that went to JFK before I finally found them. I must have been an odd sight—a 20-year-old half asleep country girl trying to navigate the Port as she attempted to haul an overstuffed backpack and an old 1960’s suitcase on wheels behind her. Haha. It wasn’t funny at the time, but it was once I found the bus.

(As a semi side note, the driver to JFK had the most amazing dreads I have ever seen in my life. We discussed this a bit on the trip over. It was quite amusing, but it also made me feel a little bit more at home. Thank you GMC.)

Finally got to the airport, which was easier than I initially thought it would be. The bus actually drops you off at your designated gate! And gate 1 isn’t that large! I stumbled into the place and started looking for Air China and my professor. I saw this kid in the distance who looked somewhat familiar, but I honestly see a lot of people that look familiar in odd places, so I sort of ignored it and attributed the uncanny similarities to the lack of sleep I had in the past twenty-four hours. Lo and behold, as I was walking by, the kid screams out to me: Nicole? He said. I was baffled. Almost dropped my suitcase as I turned around to see Mike Campbell, a fellow GMC student. He had been unable to make it to the pre- meeting for the trip, so I had no idea he was going to be attending. But there he was, smiling per usual. I was psyched. I would have someone I previously knew to hang out with on this trip! Yes!

And so it began. A few minutes of wandering around. Mike finally saw the professor, so we headed over, and spent the next three hours waiting for everyone else to arrive and trying to get to know those who had already arrived. I drank two coffees in a vain attempt to stay awake a few more hours. Then we boarded and were on our way across the North Pole to Beijing China. Oh yes. The real journey had begun.

I don’t know how long you have personally spent on a plane before. Maybe a couple hours? Maybe four? Try thirteen. The longest plane ride I had ever been on before this trip was a whopping 45 minutes to Washington, DC. DC also happened to be the farthest away from home I had ever been. So. Here I was traveling to Tibet on a 13 hour plane ride without any previous experience to even compare it to. But you gotta start taking chances sometime, eh?

Thirteen hours on a plane is like living in a bubble inside of another bubble for half a day.
There’s that constant droning sound of the engine that eliminates one’s ability to have any in depth or real conversation. There’s that complete stranger’s baby who keeps screaming because his or her ears keep popping as the altitude changes. There are complete strangers around you that you will eventually get to know, but whom you have a hard time getting to know because of that constant drone and that baby and… the first bubble is you. Just you. It’s so hard to communicate with others in logical terms around you that you feel like you are in a bubble all alone. And then, you’re also in a bubble in the sky. A plane however many miles above the earth. You have no way to contact the people below you, or the people behind you, your people at home. You have no real connection to them either. You are among the clouds. And the only real interesting past time in this bubble is staring down at the things the bubble is passing over, which only emphasizes the fact that you are, in fact, in a bubble, in a bubble above the world. And then, pretty much everyone decides to fall asleep at some point, which means that you better be pretty quiet in your bubble as you find some sort of pastime to make the last five hours go by. It’s quite bizarre. Very much unreal. Definitely the longest thirteen hours of my life.

Our plane went right over the North Pole. Here’s a picture Bud took of the Arctic Ocean. (Bud’s a soon to be junior at UVM who, like me, was born and raised in NH and decided to go to VT for college. Needless to say, we ended up hanging out a lot during the trip.)

And then we were in Beijing. It was hot. It was humid. It was crowded. I think Barbara, our tour guide for China, said there were 11 million people living in Beijing? Wow. Just wow. The traffic was crazy getting back to the hotel, and although most of us just wanted to collapse upon arriving, we had dinner (much better than the airline food, which most of us hadn’t eaten). Dinner was AMAZING. At first I was afraid, being a vegetarian and all, but there were a handful of us, and we had some of the best tofu I’ve ever had in my life, among other things. So amazing.

So here’s a picture of the hotel we stayed at in Beijing. It was quite fancy.

We got into Beijing around 6pm on July 4th. By the time dinner was over, it was 9pmish according to their time, and dinner had given some of us energy. Mike and I went on a bit of an exploratory walk down the street from our hotel and bumped into a bunch of the locals who were just chilling on the sidewalks playing card games. There were others who were chilling along with them and playing instruments or singing, but not because they were looking for money (there were no visible hats or instrument cases for this) but because they simply enjoyed it, as it was a good way to pass the evening. (It was so cooL! I want to be able to chill out on a sidewalk with my friends singing!) There was a small park we walked into as well, with a footbridge and flowers. It was all very very nice, and gave me a much different impression than I had originally upon entering the city. We eventually went to bed and spent our first night on the other side of the world.

So I think I’m going to be journaling about this entire adventure much like this: in one to two day segments. So much has happened and there are so many things to describe, but I've got a lot on my plate right now. All details will be given. Many pictures will be seen. But it will be a process, so my apologies for the amount of time it will take to transfer my adventures to you!

Until next time: keep your dreams alive.