Ohmmmm.....Relaxing Day in the Lama Temple

Meditating in the Lama Temple




So the morning began a bit stressfully--my friend Jennie and I headed over to the Bird's Nest to put some last-minute contraband snack items in our lockers before the stadium goes on lockdown tomorrow. Well, we got to the subway stop just fine, but we could not GET to the stadium! It was like a mirage in the desert, we could see it,
but it was unattainable--we had to cross 16 lanes of traffic and we couldn't find any place to cross over. It was a bit frustrating...AND it was the hottest weather we've seen since we've been here! In fact, the past 3 days have been unbearably hot.

Once we got in to the Nest, after circling for over an hour, we filled our lockers, filled up our empty water bottles and began our next adventure: heading to the Lama Temple.

By the time we arrived, we were pretty hungry. So before we went in we stopped for some lunch at a Tibetan restaurant that promised an English menu. We walked right in...I remember thinking "I don't care WHAT they serve, I'm just thrilled about the air conditioning in here!" Well, it turns out I DID care what they served--YAK, and lots of it! Yak milk, yak tongue, yakkity yak yak. As Jennie and I thumbed through the menu I started to panic...what would we do? Could we politely leave? What is the mandarin word for vegetarian?! And then, at the last pages of the mammoth menu, we found: Tibetan stir-fry veggies, Tibetan style potatoes and some spicy fried chicken. Everything was delicious, and better yet, the yak milk was complementary! (Pics below: yak milk and Tibetan potatoes...wanted to take a picture of the chicken, but we ate it too fast!)
























After our delicious meal, we headed to the temple for some enlightenment. We walked in through a tree-lined entrance and it was the quietest, most peaceful place I've been since we got here. I kept thinking of the Great Wall and how we pushed and prodded our way through, and the temple was so relaxing and quite. We wandered through the different smaller temples, making our way to final temple, the Guinness Book of World Records' 2nd-largest Buddha statue in the world. It was HUGE...and it was made out of ONE trunk of sandalwood--unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures. It definitely was a sight to behold.