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| Verity and Samten Kyi. |
Most of the volunteer teachers at Tibet
Charity don't stick around for the full 4-month term. This means that
many of the students have numerous different English teachers
throughout their education here. When I first started at the
beginning of August, I was teaching both the Elementary and
Pre-Intermediate classes. I since handed the Pre-Intermediates off to
Brij, and then he handed them off to Charlene. When Verity arrived a
few weeks ago, she took on some students for conversation classes.
One of the students who has had me,
Brij, Verity, and Charlene is Samten Kyi. She is an absolute
sweetheart and her English is pretty decent. She and Verity have
apparently hit it off really well, and often times for their
conversation “classes” they just go for walks around town and
talk about whatever comes to mind. Samten Kyi offered to take Verity
to Norbulingka to show her the workshops there, and then Charlene and
I got invited to go with them.
The workshops aren't open on the
weekends – when I had gone to Norbulingka before – so, as those
who speak British English say, I was keen to go again and see the
Tibetan crafters at work.
As usual, one of my students, Gyaltsen,
kept me after class so I could pronounce the vocab words he'd gotten
from another teacher. After a few minutes I told him I had to get
going because there was a taxi waiting for me; “Sorry, Teacher!”
he said and scampered off.
Even though monsoon season is supposed
to have ended a few weeks ago, we still get bouts of extreme fog and
rain. I grabbed my umbrella – and it's a good thing, too – and we
headed off down the mountain.
Just as we arrived at Norbulingka, it
started pouring. We all jumped out and ran into the Tibetan cafe
where we had decided to have lunch. Over thukpa (Tibetan soup) and
tea, Samten Kyi explained to us that “yaks don't give milk. Yak
wife gives milk” and that female yaks are called dri,
although to hear her say it it sounded more like “drrr.” I didn't
realize “yaks” were only male.
Luckily, the rain
stopped just as we finished our meal and we were able to go watch
some of the artisans at work: tailors, thangka painters, and weavers:
They have a Tibetan doll museum as
well.
Samten Kyi showed us where she's from
in Tibet:
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| Tibet has musk deer... |
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| ...Tibetan wolves, Himalayan bears... |
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| ... and Yetis, apparently. |
Before we left we stopped in the gift
shop. The things in the Norbulingka gift shop are very nice, with
price tags to match; there was a strand of (very pretty) amber prayer
beads... for 33,000 rupees! We didn't buy them. I did,
however, seriously contemplate picking up one of the handwoven raw
silk shawls (they were actually fairly reasonably priced).
Oh, and apparently an Indian reality show was
being filmed when we were there.
