If you’ve been following the recent news, you know that Tibet is having a terrible time right now. (If you don’t, the BBC has a good rundown.)

I’ve been trying to find the words to express how angry and sad and frustrated I have been since this violence started.  It is a very strange feeling to look at pictures coming out of Lhasa and recognize in the burnt-out shells places I and my classmates passed every day for three weeks. Yahoo has an extensive photo gallery of Lhasa and Tibetan protests. In the rubble, so far I’ve recognized a teashop in which I got a wonderful cup of tea, a little Chinese dumpling shop that would belch out the noxious fumes of cooking cabbage and unidentifiable meat, and various shops near the Barkhor. Of course, we can’t contact any of the people we met in Tibet, so we don’t know if they are safe or not.

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Lhasa sits on a plain over 13,000 feet above sea level. The sun is bright, the views are sweeping, and the air…well, the air is thin. For many lower-altitude people, this means altitude sickness.

Here in Mississippi we’re only a few feet above sea level, and on the coast, many folks are below sea level. The atmospheric density is far above Tibet’s, and the humidity is much higher. Moving quickly from this low altitude to the high one–as we did–can produce symptoms in some people. (It’s not so much the altitude itself as it is the speed at which you move to it.) However, even this doesn’t always determine whether you will get sick–some people just seem to be more susceptible than others.

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Tibetan arts and crafts are characterized by ornate decoration and bright colors. There were many things that I wished I could bring home with me. However, it is important to note that Tibet is fighting to retain some measure of cultural uniqueness. Every real Tibetan antique that is taken out of the country is one more piece of heritage that Tibet loses. Already many beautiful monasteries have been partially or wholly destroyed, and the artwork on the walls of the Potala Palace is being painted over or covered by fabrics.

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