Welcome to funky town

I feel like the only way to describe Leh for me is Funky Town. I'm in a very touristy part, which is probably affecting my view. If I was living with locals, I'd probably have a different perception.

There are tourists from many countries, all over Europe and Asia and a few from the Americas. My guest house is very nice, and it's fun now to hear the range of languages being spoken every day. Interestingly enough, there are a fair amount of Israelis here, and some shops have sings in Hebrew as well as English. But, like almost any part of the world, English is the international language. Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating by having English as my first language.

Yesterday I didn't do much besides Internet, as all the shops were closed. Normally, our guest house doesn't serve food, but since many restaurants were closed, they offered to serve us dinner, if we wanted. It is a couple, with their young boy and her mother, who runs the guest house, so it has a family feel to it. We had what I would consider a typical meal; rice, dal, and vegetables. We even got butter tea! I'd been feeling homesick for butter tea, and had yet to find it in any of the restuarants. It was a nice meal, more authentic than I'd had in any restaurant.

Today I wasn't feeling so well, so I stayed in and rested. I wanted to wake up early to walk up to a stupa that is up the hill a bit, but it was raining this morning, so that was out of the question. Mojun went out and found where the local markets are, and found some scarfs for a great bargain there. We'll head back down there tomorrow, where we won't be charged the tourist price and can get something closer to the local price. I'm pretty excited!

It's hard for me to believe that I'll be home in less than a week now. I still feel so far away, but being in such a touristy place makes me think of the Western world again. I'm excited to be going home, though, and seeing everyone. It's so easy to get to the Internet here, I could be on almost every day before I leave!