I have a roommate this week. A girl from Guwahati is here in Shillong for a seminar that is going on this week about counseling. She was staying at a hostel but said that the beds were too hard so she wanted to come and stay at our house. Houser has been gone all week teaching so it's nice to have someone to talk to. She is from Germany and is quite friendly.
Today my roommate and I were walking to the junction to catch a taxi. We waited there for a few minutes and a taxi drove by with a huge, dead pig in the back seat, all four legs sticking up in the air. Maybe two minutes later in the opposite direction a car drove by pulling a trailer with a dead, skinned cow in it, loosely covered by a tarp. Perhaps they were on the way to the meat market.
My friend from Germany said, "That's the sort of thing that makes you want to be a vegetarian."
It reminded me of this picture I had of a yak in China. Yaks are very important to many Tibetans. They will dry their meat and use it year round. They use their milk to make cheese and butter and even their hair to make coats and blankets. We saw many when we were in Shangri-la.
