Mon. May 20 "plans..what plans!?"

What to do!!? First day of my vacation and even though I am pretty jetlagged and slept probably only for a few hours, I’m feeling very excited and antsy at the same time. Maybe it’s because I don’t have any pressing agendas or travel plans that's why I’m not feeling so tired. Just talked briefly with Mako on facebook about our travels and I hope that she is able to somehow meet up with me in Bangkok on the 28th thru the 31st of May before I fly to India. For those of you who don’t know Mako, she means a lot to me and one of a few people who helped me a lot in my life when I was 18 or 19 years old. We go a long way back, she was my philosophy teacher when I went to City College and she introduced me to Zen Center before going down to Tassajara to practice for ten years! I admire and look up to her a lot. 

Since Mako is doing some kind of retreat in Dharamsala until the end of June I am still debating, and at the moment I am inclining towards the possibility of flying to Delhi and going there myself. It’s pretty clear to me at least that if I were to stay in Pune the rest of my summer just to study Sanskrit intensively I would probably ruin my entire vacation. There's no need for that anymore. It’s not that I am not eager to learn Sanskrit but now that I have been studying it very intensively the past nine months with Vinaya on Skype I also need a break. I don’t feel that it is always necessary to confine myself to one city in India for three months. Being in one city for an extended period of time can be torturous and extremely boring in India. That’s the great thing about the internet. Back in the days, scholars felt that they had to travel to India for three months in the summers to study with pandits but now with skype and the possibility of learning online which I had done the last nine months with my teacher I don't feel compel any longer to torture myself like I did last summer. This summer is going to be nothing but fun on my agenda--no arduous work other than eating a ton of good food, swimming it all off, doing plenty of yoga, and a little bit of studying and meeting other Sanskrit teachers who can help me as well when I get back to the States. Vinaya is going to introduce me to a Pali teacher and my intention is to study with her intensively when I get back from my vacation and not during my vacation. It's a good thing that I am not planning to rack my brain this summer with a crazy studying schedule. 


On the other hand, maybe I can convince Vinaya to fly with me. In that case I can have sanskrit classes with her while traveling around the Himalayas or again I can even Skype with her--I just need to find a reliable fast internet cafe and we can have lessons that way. 

I've never flown business or first class nor probably ever will in this lifetime anyways but having an entire row all to myself which is right next to the exit is probably as close as I'll ever get. Love it when a plane is a third of capacity. 

The plane trip was not so bad. At first I thought Delta was gonna be like American Airlines where they cram passengers together giving little leg room. Boy was I completely wrong. There was a lot of room actually even in economy class. 2 seats on the sides of the plane and 3 in the middle which is not bad at all! The food was okay but the flight attendants were really friendly and the people that I was with were so quiet. No crying babies, no rowdy passengers...It was a very peaceful flight. Vietnam Airlines was pretty bad but heck I'll take 78 passengers with rows of empty seats any day. 

My cousin Duy Nguyen. We're about the same age and really his mom and him are the only relatives  that I have in Vietnam other than my mom.