Dharamsala update

hello all,
we are still teaching away here in "little lhasa" as they call it. i'm loving it so much that we decided to stay a week longer than we thought. our super beginner class is pretty funny. we are teaching them dates, parts of the body, how to conjugate sit, have, be. they love to say "i am happy." they are of such mixed levels that it's difficult to tailor the classes to suit everyone, especially without any guidance from the school, but i think we are doing a good job. the funniest part of the class is taking attendance. we call out the names and we are probably pronouncing the names completely wrong so that if there are 30 people sitting in the room, only 10 will raise their hands when their names are called, and sometimes they raise their hands for two names.

we do conversation class in the afternoon which is just a room full of tibetans and the volunteers come in and just have any random conversation with a group. it's a little uncomfortable to just try to make conversation and the usual boring topics of where are you from, how long have you been here, how did you learn english....they also inevitably want to talk about politics and the tibetan situation. i was really into it at first but it's getting old and it's usually the monks that want to talk about it and the others seem bored. when i say i have been to china they are really curious and ask me about it and what the people are like. they want to know if we have seen any of "their people" and i tell them about our overnight stay with the nomads. they usually aren't too impressed with that, it's like a foreigner being really excited to come to america and going to a restaurant and seeing a football game. not too exciting for us but very different for them.

so jon and i decided to do word games with groups that have more advanced english skills. i did it yesterday with two monks and they liked it so much that i am meeting with them today just to talk and help them with their english. but we can't do the games all the time because there are always people of different abilities and they don't have a large vocabulary. we also found another conversation class that happens right after the first, and that one has so many people but so much spirit as well. after the discussion everyone comes together and we talk as a big group and it is so much more lively and they are so appreciative of the volunteers. many tibetans go to both conversation classes. i even had another girl ask if i would tutor her every day and jon had a monk ask to meet with him today. it just seems to be a matter of talking to people here and finding so many volunteer opportunities. just in this small town there are 6 or 7 organizations always looking for volunteers.

anyway, it's nice to have a bit of a routine for a month, get up, go to class, have lunch, hang out and read or tutor, go to conversation class, go to next conversation class, go to dinner, go home. in between trying not to get completely drenched by the constant rain.

if you are interested here is the website of the organization where we are teaching: lhaindia.org


that's all on our life for now. hope everyone is well.
Gay