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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China gets its way once again: Team Tibet will not be allowed to participate in the Olympics, since Tibet is not recognized as a sovereign state. The team is apparently still in good spirits, and hopes to try again in 2012. Perhaps they’ll have better luck when the games aren’t hosted by their oppressors.

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Here’s something interesting…

Buy a yak for needy Tibetan families, or just buy a share in a yak.

Yaks provide much of what a traditional Tibetan family needs–butter for tea and lamps; hair for clothes, tents, slings, and offerings; meat; and tasty, tasty cheese.

Tibetan kids are cute as buttons! Chubby little windburned, sunburned cheeks, ready smiles, and often a cheery “Hallo!”

Many of the younger children we saw were a bit shy, and would hide behind Mom if we waved at them. Mom would encourage them to greet us, and they’d blush and hide even more, in that little-kid way that isn’t really hiding, with their bodies behind Mom’s legs and their heads sticking out.

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