Celebrating Losar with a Tibetan family
The highlight of the Tibetan calendar and also of living in Bouddha is the New Year, Losar , taking place in February. ( lo = year, sar = new) Already weeks before the actual date all kind of preparations are going on: People clean up their houses and specially the house-shrines, prepare huge amounts of special biscuits called kabse and give order to make new dresses chupas. The second last evening before the New Year according to the tradition the family joins together and eats a special type of soup called guthuk. ( gu = 9, thuk = soup) Not only does this soup contain nine different ingredients, but also small pieces of paper, covered by bread on which symbolic words are written. Every member of the family will receive one of them and the meaning can be quite auspicious. There are words such as sun, symbolizing a friendly and shiny character, salt which means being lazy, moon for somebody who dispels other peoples obstacles or chilly representing a rather wrathful char...