Two weeks later...

Last Tuesday I was wiped out from work and the onset of a slight lung infection. I think coming from the clean hills of West Virginia to the polluted traffic jams every evening has taken some adjustments. So I stayed in my apartment all day, studying, resting, watching Indian TV, and cooking. I only left the apartment once to buy some daikon for my soup, and stepped in some dog shit. I started laughing immediately about the situation, and was reminded of the 2004 trip to Varanasi, in which that happened on a daily basis for some reason.
Amchila said that I did well on both the oral and written examinations, and we have moved on to the five general chapters on the development of disease. We covered that already in 2005, but now we are doing it in Tibetan rather than English. We are on the classification of diseases now, and then will be skipping ahead to the Physician in Action chapter, which we also covered but Amchila wants to write a short book on this subject so we are going to focus on that for a while. At first, I felt a little disappointed that we would not be going to the sections on diet and lifestyle, which we have not covered thoroughly yet. Now, I have decided to trust in his guidance because he has more wisdom than I.
Last night Amchila and I met up with Dr. Dorjee Rapten, who is a friend, but also the chairman of the Central Council of Tibetan Medicine, which is the governmental organization that is in place to set and uphold the standardization of Tibetan Medicine. He is a very charismatic person, and I had a great time. His family is in Toronto, and he is taking leave to be with them for a couple of years, so we might not see him again for a while.
Today is my day off, and I came to the India center to get a little western culture immersion. Ahh, young American students, out of their element, feels familiar.