its finally springtime here! the days are really warm and sunny, the trees are about to explode with leaves. we (mailny the girls) have been sleeping outside on the roof almost every night for the past couple of weeks. with tons of blankets and layers of clothing, it's very comfortable laying under the shooting stars and listening to the wild dogs barking in the desert. in the morning we wake up early with the sun beating down on us and we try to stay asleep for a bit longer by burying our heads in our sleeping bags, but soon we get up and go down to breakfast. the first time we slept outside, we were all almost asleep when everyone noticed that there was a dzo on the other side of the roof. all they could see was its giant shape in the dark. everything about this trip is so funny and strange.. a few weeks ago ella, emery, max, laura and i went on a bone hunting expedition. becky had mentioned something about there being human bones up on the hillside and we decided to go see for ourselves. the landscape near secmol is the most bizzare thing, its a regular desert if you just look at the ground, with small dusty rocks and a few tiny dry plants, but then all of a sudden the ground turns into a mountain, and then behind that there are snow-covered mountains, and behind that are clouds. and the indus river reminds me of the grand canyon with the huge cliffs on either side. anyway, we felt like we were in a movie or video game or weird dream as we walked along a small stream through the brown desert, all of us holding sticks and listening to techno music from pheylan's speaker. we found a lot of unmistakably human bones-- ribs, femurs, vertabre, finger bones, and a perfect skull with all its teeth. after being really excited and slightly creeped out for a while, we put them back where we found them and went back to secmol. nobody there seems to know why the bones are there.

Ali