Hello everybody,

please excuse bad writing and errors. i have 20 minutes to get this done. We are well into our trek and it has been great. the weather has been our friend. apparently a week ago there were storms and snow but we have had comfortable sunny weather every day. the nights have been cold but we expected that.

we are passing little villages as we go and this one has an internet cafe.  yesterday we stayed at the tengboche monestary and we went to the morning prayers. it was very neat. i wish i could remember the chanting to help me up the tough bits. it is one of the highest monestarys  in the world.

today we have had a acclimatization day. they call it a rest day. i suppose if you consider hiking up a 45 degree angle to 5000 meters (not sure what that is in feet but its high)  and then back down over 5 hours a rest, then it was a rest day. it was a hard day but the scenery was stunning and and we saw eagle soaring, mountian phesants, and frozen glacier lakes.

our group is great. there are ten of us and our guide who is also awesome. everybody is in thier twenties except one lady and jim and i. there is a wide range of ability but we have a great group dynamic and everybody is very supportive.

we stay in tea houses each night and they are rudimentary but adequate. there is no hydro or heat of course but eahc one has a yak dung stove in the dining area and we can huddle around that as long as we want.  the main thing that we have been eating is something called Dal blat. it is a rice dish with lentil soup and curried vegatables. it si filling and good.

i hadnt been feeling well the last couple of days. i wasnt sleeping, had a headache and explosive bowels. ( i think that it was from the slab of yak cheeze that i bought from a lady in a stone house on the mountain) but i am feeling better now. i slept last night. i am going to close now as i have done this a few times and the internbet has gone off. so far so good. we are well and in good spirits. the weather is getting colder as we acend but god willing all will be well.