THIRTEEN DAYS AND COUNTING....................

Why do some people bother to travel, if they will spend the entire time complaining about not being able to get a diet coke?  I have spent more time listening to complaining about the conditions that my fellow volunteers have had to live in and the food they have had to eat as oppose to them just taking a risk and trying something new.  All it has been exasperating, cause you can only listen to so much complaining.  I call it the five star syndrome. The signs of it are- incessive bitching at home about how bored one is, how everything outside of the country is exotic and a "rewarding adventure", then once they arrive they have this 5 star reality that nothing can live up to.  Reagan had to fix the cold war, cause if Russia  had actually beat us then we would kill ourselves because we really didn't get our mtv.
The program is getting on my last nerve. Its actually rough living with several other personalities, for short periods of time, in a strange situation. It doesn't get easier if everyone isn't on the same page in terms of purpose..In situation there has to be cohesion. It could come from a leader, or the activity itself. When there is absence of both, then to me it's a big black hole. 
China has been a big step for me also.  I feel that it's a place I would never be able to really come adjusted to if I had to live here for period of time. It's rough. It is a developing country. The driving is erratic, the people are friendly and noisy :).  I don't think that I could ever get used to people just staring at me as if I really did come from another planet. And the occational conversation about my physical being as if I weren't there. Sometimes they can be nice, and sometimes they can be very nasty. Really nasty.  The poverty is something that just jarrs me at times. Its difficult to see children pimped by their mothers for pennies. To look in their eyes and see any shred of self esteem, just ripped out of them.  The saddest incident I saw didn't involve a child, but a woman who was in her late 20s to mid 30s, who sat on the steps of McDonald, declaring to a large audience that she was no good as a person and as a wife because her husband left her.  
I have to say that all these experiences have just shown me how life occurs in different ways, different days, and always has the same them.  
I have been looking forward to going to Tibet. I am ;hoping to have some transformation, spiritually. I find it ironic, because in 2001, I tried to go to visit a friend who was working there but couldn't get it to work, now I am going. I am hoping to see something anew about myself, and to leave behind something old. That is one of the greatest things about traveling if you give into the adventure, you can be "born again'