Pizza & Momos

This is it. I'm done teaching at Tibet Charity. Final exams were held yesterday; most of my students passed (a few of them have the extra credit to thank for that) and some did exceptionally well. 

Today Gusti and I took them out for a pizza party in Dharamkot. The students brought some momos, we ordered ten delicious pizzas, and everyone had a lot of fun.

They kept telling me to sit down and relax, but I can't help it -- I enjoy entertaining and if I'm in anything resembling a hostess position, I tend to get into it. I asked them if they have winter holidays coming up in Tibetan/Bhutanese culture aside from New Year's. They said no, but asked about what we've got in the US. I told them all about Thanksgiving (Happy T-day to my friends in the States!), which most of them seemed quite interested in, and they asked all kinds of questions about turkeys. I don't think they have them here. I told them how most Americans prepare a big meal for this holiday so the fact that we were all out having food together was, in a way, quite similar. It's like they'd gotten together to make a Thanksgiving-away-from-home for me, and they seemed pleased that they could do this.

They insisted on doing everything. The students wouldn't let Gusti or me cut the pizzas, they wouldn't let us serve the food, and they always gave us the first slices when a fresh one would come out. Tibetans can be very bossy, but when it's in the context of such hospitality, how can you get upset?

After finishing our lunch and taking a bunch of photos on a dozen different cameras, phones, and tablets, they instructed us to follow them "up to the mountain." When I asked how far they answered "not far," but pointed to some indefinite area wayyyyyyyy off in the distance. I joked that it would take so long I'd miss my flight home. I hadn't worn the proper shoes for a real hike; I knew we'd be taking pictures so I opted to wear my red jutis that I got in Jaipur. People have been telling me they're more like house shoes. This bothered me at first, but then I remembered: I don't wear shoes in the house. If they're shoes, and I'm wearing them, it's going to be outside.

I pointed this out to them, that I wasn't wearing anything that could possibly pass for hiking shoes. Jampel, the one monk, told me "the Bhutan guys are very strong, they'll carry you!" to which the "Bhutan guys" responded that Tibetans were stronger (it's true, they tend to be tall and tough in general), but one way or another they'd get me where we were going.

This is Dolker. She's super sweet, and a pretty good student, too.

The view just never gets old.

Eventually we came to a Hindu shrine where we took some more photos and then backtracked just a little to a grassy spot where we could chill, sing songs, and munch on snacks for a while.

When we finally headed back down to McLeod Ganj, they insisted on taking a shortcut -- the same shortcut that Kalden, Brij, Marie, and I took when we went up to Triund that one time. At one point my foot slipped a bit and I heard a chorus of "Ohhh!" from the students who were in the lead and down below us. Lobsang Dolma, one of my quietest but most thorough students, insisted on holding my hand the rest of the way to make sure I didn't fall, even though she had also earlier insisted on carrying my bag as well as Gusti's, even though she already had her own. "Tibetans are very strong," I observed. They asked me if the roads were "like this" where I live; I told them no, only in the forests in some places. Generally they are in much better condition. They seemed to take this as a perfectly good explanation as to why they could navigate the rocky, irregular path so much more easily than us westerners.

Regardless, we made it down with no casualties. What we had originally planned to be a 3-hour event turned into one that lasted all morning and into the afternoon. It was fantastic. I love the comfort level that you reach with people after seeing them nearly every day for weeks or months, and when the official business or class or whatever is done, everyone can just relax and have a good time together. This evening we had our last staff/volunteer dinner at TC, tomorrow morning we have our closing ceremony for the semester, for which I still have to put together a speech of some sort, and after that.... we're all done. I just have to tie up my loose ends around town as far as last-minute gift obtainment, pay my bill at the hotel, eat at my favorite restaurants once or twice more, pack up all of my stuff -- and decide what's not coming back with me -- and that's it. Get on a night bus to Delhi next Tuesday or Wednesday evening, make sure I tell my students ahead of time because I know at least a couple will want to see me off, and go. Exactly one week from this very moment I'll be somewhere in Indira Gandhi International Airport, maybe waiting to go through security, maybe chilling at my gate with a book, but I'll be having my final few hours in India. 

Four months sure flies when you're having fun. I knew it would.

Where should I go for my next trip? I've got a couple of places in mind, but I'm interested to see what kind of input I can get from my dear readers......

Supporting the local economy

मेरे दोस्तों नमस्ते !
I'm the kind of person who likes to sleep in. Mornings like today are somewhat uncommon: I woke up an hour before my alarm went off (even though I didn't go to bed until 2am), energized and ready to Get Shit Done. I even surprised myself.

I'm now well within my last two weeks here in India, which means it's finally time to buy all the souvenirs and things I want to take home. I had been putting it off because buying more stuff would mean I'd have more stuff to store, and with a trip to Rajasthan in the mix, during which I left the rest of my possessions with a friend, it didn't make sense to add to the amount of things I'd have to cart back and forth. I don't imagine I'll be moving again before my final trip to Delhi, so now the shopping can commence.

If any of you want something specific, tell me now. If you want something specific and expensive, I'll send you my Paypal address so you can get those dollas to me.

I went into McLeod Ganj for breakfast, enjoying a satisfying chicken sandwich with mango & coriander chutney on the patio, in the sun, at Moonpeak Espresso. I haven't been there in a while. On my way, I stopped in to a shop to take a look at something specific on my list for a gift. The middle-aged Indian proprietor smiled a lot and wasn't pushy at all; when I asked in Hindi if he had what I was looking for, he became excited as well. We talked for a few minutes, him showing me various items on the shelves in his tiny store, and even though I felt like it must have been painful for him to endure my butchery of his native language when he clearly could speak mine, he complimented me, saying that my Hindi was "bohut sunder" -- very beautiful -- and that I sound like I've been speaking it for a long time. 

All I have to say is LOL. Thanks, sir, but I don't entirely believe you. It's sweet of you to say, though.

After breakfast I headed up to the ATM because, well, the whole point of going in to town today was to shop and I needed funds. Over the last 4 months I have made friends with one of the shopkeepers near said ATM. The guys over there tend to hang out outside because their shops are tucked back from the street; it's easier to grab customers if they're more visible.

Taj showed me all kinds of pretty things, of which I purchased a few unique pieces for gifts this upcoming Xmas (lucky you if you get one of them!). He made a comment that he'd give me the "local price" because I'd been here long enough that "now you are a local." I told him "Baria!" to which he responded with a surprised "and now you also speak Hindi!" He was kind enough to let me practice a bit, only reverting back to English when I really had no idea how to get my point across otherwise. It's so much fun. It's like decoding a puzzle.

I try to speak in Hindi as much as I can, because that's the only way to get better at it, not to mention more comfortable with it. Most of the people I do this with seem initially surprised but then appreciative; I have had a couple of Indians tell me that many foreigners come to Dharamsala because it's a Tibetan area, and the Indian locals get looked over or even looked down on. This is unfortunate, of course, but it works in my favor in a way because I stand out as "that foreigner who has actually bothered to learn our language." Obviously I support the Tibetan community as well -- it's the reason I came here, after all; I do volunteer at a place called Tibet Charity -- but there's a different sort of inclusion I feel when I bust out what little Hindi I have with the Indians. It's like I immediately gain a bit of status in their eyes, like I really am more "local." Sometimes, in my desire to use it as much as I can, I catch myself nearly speaking Hindi with my students or other expats who only understand English... it's pretty funny.

One thing I enjoy about McLeod Ganj and Dharamsala is being able to say at least "hello" in a few different languages. I know how to say this and "thank you" in Tibetan, and that's pretty much it -- but there's something exciting about walking down the street and greeting Tibetans with tashi delek, then passing a westerner or two and telling them hi, and responding to the Indian shopkeepers' "Hello, Madam" or "How are you?"  or "Yes, taxi?" -- it's like navigating a town full of NPCs, I swear -- with a namaste or thik, aap kaise hai? or nahin, thank you bhaiya. I feel so multicultural.

The way I tend to be

Last night as I made my way up the steps of Pause Dwelling, I heard a familiar "namaste, ma'am" from just above and to my left. It was promptly followed by a short string of Hindi, of which I was able to make out just enough to stumble through a response of "I'm going to my room" (मै मेरा कमरा जा रहीं हूँ ). ... Or at least that's what I said, it might not quite be right.

He said something else so I hopped up the last couple of steps and around onto the balcony where he was sitting, and I took the empty seat next to him. Long story short, by the time I actually made it to my room I had a basic understanding of how to write Hindi -- not just try to mimic the typewritten text in books -- and I had also been assigned homework:

Who gives "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today" as a first translation assignment??

I also installed a Hindi keyboard and a flashcard app on my phone so I can study when I don't have internet. Brij gave me a couple of movies in Hindi to watch, as well as some music. The language itself really is, I think, relatively easy... it's just the fact that I'm learning a new language at all that's tricky. The grammar seems to be pretty consistent and now that I can read the script, I'm finding that most words are phonetic.

As far as English class at Tibet Charity, today we were studying possessive pronouns and rhyming words. Naturally, the book suggested I give them songs as examples. The ones it provided were Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman and Every Breath You Take by The Police (Every breath you take/Every move you make... boom, rhyming words). I took the liberty of adding my own personal touch and gave them "I was her love, she was my queen/And now a thousand years between" and "Then I remember you/And the way you shine like truth in all you do"... I couldn't help myself. Hearing them read the lyrics off the board was a trip, too.

At the break, Gusti suggested I give them some nursery rhymes to further illustrate the point. Neither of us could recall much, but I did give them "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star." They really seemed to enjoy it, and they understood rhyming well enough by the end of it that I was able to leave "sky" blank and they figured it out (rhymes with high, judging from the meaning, etc).

Then the book had an activity for us that involved filling in missing words from song lyrics. The song it chose, due to its high content of possessive pronouns, was this. I felt like I was either at a wedding reception or a high school dance. Imagine me teaching this to a bunch of monks and nuns. Pretty hilarious, right? Now I've got it stuck in my head.

So it goes. There are worse things in the world.

A weekend in Amritsar

The guys at Pause Dwelling are on to me – they have all been speaking to me in Hindi the last few days. This would be great, except I still know so little that I am lucky if I understand even two or three words in each sentence. It's only making me more determined, though, and I'm planning to scour the local bookstores for a good English-Hindi dictionary and a phrasebook as well. If this guy can become fluent in a foreign language in just 3 months, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to hold at least a basic conversation by the end of two.

I didn't get a whole lot of time to practice my Hindi skillz this weekend, however, because Charlene, Verity, and I took a trip to Amritsar.

Look! There's snow on the mountain!

I practiced my reading along the way, but after we entered the state of Punjab, all the signs switched from Devanagari to Punjabi; at first I thought it was just a new font, but then I noticed a sign with both on it and realized that it was in fact a completely new script – and, I think, a new language as well.

The roads were much nicer in Punjab, and the weather got immediately warmer. We had come down off the mountain and onto the plains, and traveled a bit south besides.

Punjab looks more or less like Illinois.

I didn't see as many cows on the roads, but they were replaced by herds of water buffalo. Horses began to show up, both pulling carts and just hanging out. More and more men wore turbans – we had entered the land of the Sikhs; more of the drivers of motorbikes were women (there are very few female drivers in India from what I can tell, at least in Himachal). We passed a sign that said “Chicken Shop” and had a picture of a goat on it... I'm still not quite sure what to think of that one.

We drove for seven hours, during which time I tried to engage our driver, Suhil, in Hindi conversation. It never lasted long, though; I think he was more interested in practicing his English. He recommended we go straight to the border because they had moved the closing ceremony up an hour due to the sun going down sooner in the day.

The two big attractions in Amritsar are the closing of the border between India and Pakistan, and the Golden Temple inside the city. If we missed the border closing we'd have to stick around another day, which we didn't want to do. We got there just in time.

Luckily, none of the three of us looked Indian enough to require a passport check; we were able to go right through. Foreigners were ushered to one side while Indian citizens crowded the other side of the road. When the gate was opened, they ran – I mean they sprinted – to the next gate, everyone eager to get the best seats.

We got our seats in the relatively tiny “Foreigners Gallery” and watched the place fill up. I felt like I was at Medieval Times. There was much introduction with running of flags and dancing.

You see those bleachers behind me? That's Pakistan.

I totally photobombed this old guy. I don't think he noticed (yet).

The whole production, once it started, lasted a little over an hour. It involved campy displays of military might on both sides, literal flexing of muscles by the ornately-clad border guards, high kicks a la John Cleese, stomping, shouting, etc. It was fun but they could have cut the whole thing in half and I think it would have been even more effective. Longer is not always better.

In the end, they lowered the Indian and Pakistani flags simultaneously, and then the guards slammed their respective gates shut. The border patrol held the throng of Indians back to allow us foreigners and VIPs a chance to get out without being trampled, and we made our way back to Suhil and the taxi.

A Tibetan guy asked me along the way if I came from Dharamsala; cautiously I said yes and he told me he's seen me buying veggies at one of the produce stands. I guess it shouldn't have been too surprising; Amritsar is one of the local attractions. We eventually made it back to the taxi, but since it was Saturday evening, it was basically like we left a concert in the heart of Chicago, waiting until the last song has been sung and having to wait your turn to get out.

Event parking: you're doing it wrong.

We eventually got back onto what passes for a highway in India and into Amritsar.

I couldn't get many photos because it was late at night and we were tired, hungry, and determined to reach the temple so we could rest, but it reminded me a lot of Delhi: dirty, loud, and overcrowded.

Not remembering that a lot of the religious places around here require women to cover their hair, I left my scarf in the car and had to buy a cheap bandanna outside the temple. Apparently at Sikh temples, everyone has to cover their hair. Being a secularist, I find it a little silly, but at least it isn't sexist.

We also had to leave our shoes at a place outside the temple, kind of like when you rent skates at an ice or roller rink. Everybody plodded, barefoot, up the path to the temple where we had to walk through a shallow pool of water before entering the main area. “It's not so impressive,” my overtired self thought. Then we got inside and saw the actual golden temple. 

It was pretty cool.

From what I can gather, making a pilgrimage to the Golden Temple is for Sikhs more or less what making a pilgrimage to the Kaaba in Mecca is for Muslims. They queued up to go inside the temple itself where, I'm told, a very holy book is kept.

Music and chanting played the whole time we were there. There is also a free kitchen where anyone can go to eat anytime, day or night. First, though, we wanted to find the sleeping quarters so we could put our stuff down. After a few attempts at getting the guards to tell us where to go (and getting only vague answers), we finally found someone to take us to the special room reserved just for foreigners.

Everyone is welcome to spend the night at the temple, anytime they want... as long as they're willing to sleep on the ground outside. There is a residence hall but I'm not sure what you have to do to get one of the rooms outside the giant main room (it filled with people by the end of the night). Foreigners, however, get a special room off to the side with cots, lockers, and their own bathroom. There were a couple dozen beds altogether, but we had no trouble finding free ones.

The "inn" at the temple seemed to me how I imagine hostels. Verity said it was more like a prison.

There had to have been ten thousand people in the temple altogether. As Marie said when she got back earlier in the week, “This (Dharamsala) isn't India. That (Amritsar) is India.” It wasn't until we'd dropped off our things, washed our faces, and gone to get some free dal and chapatti that I pondered just how many people were there. It was pretty incredible.

The next morning we got up before dawn – not on purpose, it just kind of happened – which was just as well because I'd heard that the best time to view the temple was at dawn and at dusk. We went and found a spot to sit and waited for the sun to rise.

Aside from the couple of other westerners we saw in the sleeping quarters, I didn't see any other obvious foreigners there; this could explain why people looked at us with such interest. Three white women in the heart of Punjab – quite an oddity!

The longer we stayed on the temple grounds, the more I enjoyed it. I marveled at how clean the place was, and how relaxed everyone seemed to be. There were no fussy children, no raised voices... it was super chill. Everyone was nice. We had a few people come up and shake our hands, and this guy struck up a conversation in which he informed us that he's been married twice and has seventeen children, and that he's “strong like tiger!” 

 

I'm not sure if he's well known in those parts or it was just a good excuse for the rest of them to come up, but once he started talking to us a crowd formed around us three. Verity had a kid come up and say “Nice to meet you” as though he'd been practicing his English. It was cute.

We wandered around the temple for a bit and then out one of the gates where they were having what appeared to be the Sikh equivalent of a religious service. The mood here was very relaxed as well, with people spread out all over the room. One little guy ran up to us after we'd been there a few minutes and held out a pack of cookies. When we each took one he grinned and ran back to his family. He came back periodically, offering us various foodstuffs; we took some photos and he was thrilled to see himself on the little screen.

At 9 we packed up our things and headed back to collect our shoes and meet Suhil, and began the trek back home. I probably could have stayed one more day (in the temple, not in the city of Amritsar), but we've got Tibetans relying on us for English lessons, so here I am, back in McLeod Ganj. If you're ever near Punjab, I recommend checking out the Golden Temple and what the hell, go see the border thing too if you're in the mood for a show. 

A jujube tree!

I expected a priestess to come out and ask me to go retrieve Nettlebane....

What did you do over the holiday?

Oh my goodness... my students are great.

I have them write a reflection after every test, and every time we have any days off from class I have them write about what happens during the holiday. Last week we had the entire week off; HH the Dalai Lama was teaching Monday-Thursday, and so Tibet Charity decided to just close for the whole week since it didn't make much sense to have class only on Friday.

This evening I was procrastinating, whining internally about having to grade so many tests (not that many, really.. it was definitely whining) – I studied Hindi, I graded a little at a time and rewarded myself with other activities like rewinding the yarn I bought or doing push-ups, or making a list of reasons to stay until December and another list of reasons to leave a few weeks early. Eventually I decided to just buckle down and finish grading. After I got through the tests – which wasn't that bad – I remembered I still had to correct the papers on what they'd done last week.

Once I actually started doing it it went so quickly... lol... Their writing is a bit dry and predictable (usually) when they have to write about “your daily routine” or when they are asked to answer specific questions. When I let them write about what they want, though, some of them get really creative. I have a few students who must be getting pretty comfortable with me and/or with the English language, because they express these colorful, lively stories.

As it turns out, a few of my students went out to the Rewalsar/Manali area last week as well. One told me about how he and his friend got sick on the bus and threw up on the way to Rewalsar. He said that when he got there he “saw lake and statue so strong faith, but in the lake lot of fish so a little compassion.” Only Buddhists! He also worked in some of the vocabulary words we'd been using in conversation class. He did not vomit on the way back.

Another student, one of the monks, told me about how he and a friend went down to Lower Dharamsala to shop, and how they stopped for sweets and sweet tea. They met another friend on the way back who suggested they all go get some more sweets – and how they had a fun little discussion about how they couldn't keep eating like that because they'd get sick, and it's a good thing he bought new shoes to exercise!

Part of the test was to answer questions like “What do you always do?” and “What do you sometimes do?” Many of them answered that they always study English, but one said she always dances at home. I gave all of those answers smiley faces. Maybe they'll get stickers, too.

A few of my students begin nearly every writing assignment with “Hi dear teacher, how are you?” or “Dear teacher Magda...” I think it's cute. It's stuff like this that makes me want to stay. Regardless of when I leave, I'm going to miss them. I have a few of their email addresses; I'll have to get more of them. Maybe I can connect with some of them on Google+ (where you can filter who sees what much more easily than you can on Facebook). I have a few who ask if I'm teaching conversation class or if another teacher is; I suspect that they play favorites, and I know at least one of them comes to my class and not the others. I admit it makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy inside.

As far as the coming-home plans, it looks like financially it'll be pretty much a wash between staying until December or coming home a few weeks early. I'll see how I feel after the trip to Rajasthan, I guess. There are plenty of teachers here and I spoke to the boss, who said it would be fine to go whenever I wanted, so that's nice to know.

On an unrelated note, it looks like my room threw up on my bed. I'm an artist, I tell ya... that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Organized chaos: it's how I work best. I like having things neat and clean, but somehow I can never keep them that way for long. It just seems to futile to constantly be putting things away when you know they're just going to get taken out again... right? Plus when it's as humid as it is here, you almost have to leave your clothes out in an attempt to let them dry, unless you aren't concerned about that pesky mildew smell.

And now, since I did manage to finish grading all of these tests, I think I am going to reward myself with a bit of knitting before I get back to studying Hindi, or designing some kind of grammar drills for class. I think they need a little more structure in their writing assignments, and it's my job to provide that. Giving them sentences on the board to correct as a class has also gone over well in the past; I should come up with some more of those to give them. Hmmm......

Suggestions?

Beauty in Simplicity

It's been almost a solid month now since I came to India. Time flies, eh? It seems to have for me, at least. There have been new people to meet, new customs to figure out, and plenty of work to do. Brij, another teacher, showed up earlier in the week and so I got to hand over the Pre-Intermediate class (the one I got asked to teach “for a few days”) and get a little time back in my mornings. It looks like I've already got the half hour before class filled with individual tutoring for one of my students who is having some trouble keeping up; I hope it goes well.

Tibet Charity seems to be one of the more organized, decently outfitted establishments of its kind here in Dharamsala. Even so, it's a charity and there's not a ton of money to throw around. For example, we do have white boards and markers, but this is what our erasers look like:

Yes, it's a white t-shirt. An increasingly dirty white t-shirt.

Until today, at least. I came in to my Elementary class to find these

:D

resting on the ledge under the board. Little pillows of handstitched cotton. I thought to myself “Were these here earlier, and somehow I missed them?” Maybe 20 minutes into class one of my students, Karma (the one who informed me that the typical Tibetan mother drives a yak), pointed them out and told me she'd made them. How sweet! And how resourceful, too. That is one thing I've noticed about the people in India: they are resourceful. You have to be when you don't have much. Food is all made from scratch. If you need new clothes you go to a tailor so he can take your measurements and make you something. There is a fair amount of construction going on around town but there is no heavy machinery to be seen. Everything is done in a very oldschool fashion, with donkeys hauling loads of dirt and bricks, and people shaping metal with very basic tools. Rain shelters are often made of a tarp held up by a long stick with a bottle on the end so the fabric doesn't get punctured. In the stores there are no prices on anything, you have to ask and then haggle it down from whatever the shopkeeper tells you. It's not elegant, but it works.

And to be honest, there is beauty in its simplicity. In a way it feels more real. It's not as safe and structured as life in the US: the roads are shitty and sidewalks don't even exist, one of the main streets in McLeod Ganj has a steep drop off down the mountain behind the shops lining it, it's not at all unusual to see people washing their clothes or themselves with any available water source, and nobody seems to notice that there are dozens and dozens of dogs, cows, and goats just roaming wherever they damn well please. Somehow it all works.

The other day I was just getting ready to take a nap when Kalden knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go for a hike. I whined for a few minutes and then conceded, mainly because I'd chosen to indulge in some potato chips and a Snickers bar earlier in the day and I was feeling guilty about the calories. We went up (and up, and up) toward Triund. Triund itself is much farther away, but from what I understand the path we took is the first leg of the trip. We stopped at a tea shop just in time for a tremendous downpour (monsoon season, yo); we waited it out, headed back down, and the whole thing took 3 hours or so. The road was pretty:

In other news, there are some guys who have taken to chanting incessantly somewhere outside my room in the evenings. I thought it was something for when HH was in town teaching, but that ended yesterday and they're still at it. I guess it could be worse, but I still wouldn't mind if they'd go to bed.

Wednesday evening we went out for dinner at one of the local restaurants. Om Hotel is home to the Namgyal pizza place, and omg do they make good food. We had a pizza with Roquefort cheese, walnuts, chiles, tomatoes and... I don't even remember what else. It doesn't matter. It was really. Damn. Good.

Amazing, even. Who knew?

Indian chiles are pretty spicy; Bhutanese food uses them quite a bit as well. Back home I used to take a certain pride in enjoying spicy foods. Here, though, “spicy” takes on a whole new meaning. These chiles are really tasty, and they add a healthy dose of straight up flavor to whatever they're in. A lot of times I'll pull them out of the food before eating it, because just having had them touch the rest of it is usually enough. If you bite into one and you aren't expecting it, all I can say is you might want to order a couple of pieces of naan, and fast. It's a little humbling.

Oh, and an appeal to my techie friends: my iPod Touch won't turn on. This has happened before and I was always able to get it going with the whole hold-down-both-buttons-for-a-really-long-time trick, but I've done that a few times now and it hasn't gotten me anywhere. I'm getting really sad about it. Any suggestions? (I suspect that if Apple stores even exist in this country the closest one is no closer than Delhi, which is 12 hours away. Therefore, that is not an option.)

The definition of "pet" and other classroom fun

I have decided that Tibetans on the whole are very kind, very gentle, very good-natured people. My students are starting to open up to me. They talk more in class, they joke around, and more of them are coming to me individually with questions after class.

The other day in class we were doing an exercise entitled “A Typical ________ Family.” They had to fill in their nationality (Tibetan for most of them, a few Thai or Indian, and the rest were Bhutanese) and then finish the prompts below, such as “the mother works _______” and “the father reads _______.” The students tend to all talk at once most of the time, unless I specifically instruct them to take turns. Most of the answers I got for this exercise were things like “the mother cooks” and “the father reads the newspaper.” When we got to “the mother drives _______” we had to learn how to phrase “she doesn't drive” since most Tibetans in Tibet, it seems, don't have cars.

Then, loud enough to be heard but in such a way that it seemed the speaker was immediately embarrassed, I heard the answer “a yak.” I had actually been hoping for an answer like that, but I didn't know if, you know, it was ignorant and racist of me to expect that every Tibetan family had yaks. Apparently I wasn't that far off base, because I asked the student, a young lady named Karma who I can tell wants to talk but is not always sure enough of herself to do it, to repeat herself... she did so with a giggle and the rest of the class burst into laughter and agreed with her. I explained that sure, we could say that she drives a yak. It's rides, technically, but the idea was right.

I also had to explain the word “pet” to them. I decided to go with something to the effect of “an animal that lives at your house, that you take care of.” When they decided that meant yaks and sheep and horses, I had to revise it to say “an animal that lives in your house, that you take care of.” I think they've got it now.

Two to three times a week I've been holding conversation classes for my Elementary students. Attendance varies, but it's usually around half a dozen. Today I had only two students show up, both monks: Jampal and Sonam Wangdue. Jampal is one of my more advanced students. Despite his claims today that he is too shy to speak in class, he usually seems very comfortable answering questions and serving as a translator between myself and the other students when the language barrier proves to be insurmountable. Sonam Wangdue is much more shy and quiet; even with considerable prompting from his friend today he didn't say a whole lot.

For class today I had them tell me about a custom or story from their culture. Jampal taught me about the Tibetan new year's festival, while Sonam Wangdue talked about the animals that are found in Tibet.

They told their stories and afterward we went over the vocabulary words that had come up; they included domestic, representative, and elaborate. Not bad for “Elementary” level students. They were trying to find the words to explain something to me so they went back and forth in Tibetan for a minute; then Jampal told me the Tibetan word for... I don't even remember what it was. I'm not a very good student, I suppose. He asked if I was learning any Tibetan and I told him the truth: a few words here and there.

Quick aside: Kalden had started teaching us the Tibetan alphabet a couple of weeks ago. Julie has since found a monk to give her private lessons; after the first couple times I wasn't really feeling it. I thought about the practicality of learning a new language here in India and decided it would make more sense to learn Hindi, since it's spoken all over the country and Tibetan is spoken by a considerably smaller amount of people, mostly just here in McLeod Ganj. For some reason Hindi seems more accessible, too. I borrowed a couple of “teach yourself Hindi” books from Tibet Charity but haven't done much more than flip through them yet.

That being said, I felt a little guilty about wanting to learn Hindi instead of Tibetan, since the whole reason I'm here, after all, is to work with the Tibetan community. Jampal asked me if there was much of a Tibetan presence in Chicago and if I'd use the language when I went home; I told him no and he said that it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for me to learn it, then. English, he said, is an international language and therefore much more practical for them to learn. I'm not sure why it was such a big deal for me, but it was a huge relief to hear him tell me that, basically, it wouldn't be worth my time to learn more than a handful of basic phrases in Tibetan. I think I'll learn some pleasantries and greetings, functional Tibetan, and then see if I can do at least the same in Hindi.

In other news, I got my pass to go to HH the Dalai Lama's teachings that begin on Sunday:

I get to go to HH's teachings this weekend!