One thing I realized earlier is that
some of the best classes we have at Tibet Charity are the ones that
are not done, literally, by the book. My favorite ones to teach and,
it seems, the ones that are often the favorites of the students as
well, are the ones where we get off on some kind of tangent and
explore some aspect of English that isn't necessarily in the lesson
plan. A while back there was an entire day where all we did was
prefixes, suffixes, and root words.
Today we wound up spending some time on
pronunciation and spelling; the students had taken a test yesterday
and I always go over it with them as a class the next day. Only one
or two of them had spelled “twentieth” correctly, and when we
read the reading passage I decided we could use some pronunciation
practice. The main topic was how when a word ends in the letter “e,”
the preceding vowel “says its name.” Obviously, like all rules in
English, this is not an absolute... but it helped them distinguish
between “Tim” and “time,” and I wound up teaching them a
bunch of new vocabulary words in the process of illustrating the
rule. We used words like pal/pale, tam/tame, slid/slide, and
can/cane. They learned not only how to pronounce “crate” and
“kale” but what they mean.
After that we did some sentence
correcting on the board, which always goes over well. The first time
I had them do it they were quite shy, but now that it's become a
semi-regular thing they seem to enjoy it. I take sentences from their
writing assignments and change some of the details but keep the
mistakes. They go back and forth and help each other figure out how
to fix them. I should probably spend more time developing exercises
to supplement this, but we're not supposed to make copies aside from
tests... so it's a little tricky. At least we have fun. Fun things
are easier to remember.
This afternoon we said farewell to a
couple of the teachers; Brij and Marie left on a trip to
Rishikesh,
where they will stay for at least the next week. As far as I know
they don't have a strict itinerary, which is the same way we plan to
see
Rajasthan later this month. Everybody wish them a safe and fun
trip!
While the two of them were getting
their things to the bus to Rishikesh, I accompanied Verity, Gill, and
Gusti to a meditation group that is held on Wednesday evenings here.
They went once a couple of weeks ago; I had never been.
I think it was good for me. I'm going
to try to work in a bit of meditation on a regular schedule and see
what happens. I try to apply a lot of the principles that were
introduced tonight anyway, but it's definitely something that could
afford to be practiced and cultivated.
We did three separate meditations, the
second of which was “walking” or “moving meditation.” It was
a bit awkward at first, and then I realized that it was because dance
is my moving meditation. When I'm home alone I put on music and just
move, whatever seems like a
good idea, I let the music guide me. That's what they were going for
this evening, I think, but seeing as most people are too shy to
really let loose in a room of people they don't know (I know I was
the first few times I was asked to do it), just walking while drawing
your awareness to everything you sense was probably the better way to
go. Personally, though, I felt somewhat restricted. I decided I'll
have to dance more in my room or maybe up on the balcony when nobody
else is around.
I've
been trying to work in a bit of yoga here and there, but it's mainly
driven by my need to stretch. About a month and a half ago I took a
yoga class in Bhagsu where we were instructed on how to properly do a
headstand; I think I'm doing something wrong, though. Can anyone
help? You yogis and yoginis out there... how do you do it?
