Shambhala Mountain Center

Over the weekend, I went to the Shambhala Mountain Center, which is at about 8500 feet and about 2.5 hours from Boulder up in the mountains.  I went there for a retreat for my Psychology degree.  It was supposed to be a 'community building experience' but there was so much scheduled that there wasn't much time for socializing.  There was basically a lot of meditation and a few workshops, all Shambhala related.  Overall, it was pretty fun though.  The area is beautiful, and the lodges we stayed in were basically like hotels.  Also, all of the food was delicious.  But it didn't leave much time for homework, so now there's lots of that to catch up on.  Here's a picture of the Stupa at night (Chogyam Trungpa's remains are there), and the general area as well:

Other than that, not much is going on.  There's lots of homework and school.  Tomorrow I have a 12 hour work day between the two jobs, and midterms are in two weeks.  The midterm style is kinda strange, but I'll give more information on that later.  Until then, Ciao all.

-Le Mari

Well hello everyone ^_^

Alrighty. So, I am starting up this blog (woo, blog again...) so that you guys can still know what's going on with me since I'm not able to personally contact you all as much as I'd like. So for now, I'll just outline the basics of what's going on, and I'll explain things more in detail later.

I'm in Boulder, CO. I'm here for school, going to Naropa University. It is a Buddhist inspired liberal arts school, and I'm taking three classes because the financial aid system in this country is screwed up and believes that I am still a dependent of my parents, even though I've been out of the house and financially independent for about four years, am a legal adult, and am living halfway across the country from them. Yeah. Anyway...

Life is very busy. I go to school and work two jobs. I have 7 books and at least 6 online books from which I must read every week, two papers due every monday, and approaching midterms. I earn about $800 a month because wages here are low, and over half of it goes to bills and rent because cost of living here is high. Thank god I don't have any kids. However, the town is beautiful, and the people are amazing. I love one of my jobs, and like most aspects of my other job (a book store and a candy store respectively). I am meeting awesome people, and learning very engaging things. I am developing an appreciation for good music (Tim's a musician, and going to school here for music, so it's kind of expected I guess...). I'm also Vegan. I'm learning a lot about what I do and do not need to live and be happy.

And I'll leave you guys with that. More to come later. Bye all,

-Le Mari