Teaching Monks

To teach monks is much more rewarding than it was to teach in school here.

Me and the monks

I started teaching in a monastery last Sunday and I had to change my host family at the same time. My new host family is good but I miss my old host family.The monastery is just half an hour on bike from where I was before so today I will go back and visit the orphanage and my old host family. In the monastery there are 12 monks between ages 10-16, they live together in a tiny temple and so far I have been teaching together with a Margaret from Latvia which has been great. Margaret wanted to learn Swedish as well so I taught her Swedish in the evenings. Turned out she was a really fast learner and she could make real sentences on her own after just three days. Fun to have someone to talk Swedish to, even if our conversations were very basic.

Back to the real teaching. So, we divided the monks into two groups and she taught the ones who barely knew how to answer questions in English and I taught the other group. My group knows English quite well, for instance they know how to form easy sentences and their pronunciation is most of the time easy to understand. 

Our classroom

The hardest part of teaching the monks is to know what to teach, because they don't have any books, at all. Sometimes I complain in Sweden when we don't have books to all our student, but here we don't have books in any subjects and we don't have computers. Another thing which makes it difficult is that I don't know what teachers before me have done. There is no plan or curriculum for them and the only way to find out what they have done earlier is to look in their note books. There is no regular teacher, except for their Lama-teacher but he doesn't teach English. The only teaching of English is done by volunteers, which is what I thought teaching in Nepal would be like. I thought I would be needed here and that I actually would be able to help out through my experience as a teacher. In the monastery I feel like I 'm really needed which is good but at the same time I feel bad about how the teaching of the monks is structured (or not structured). What they need is stability and someone who can stay with them and teach them for at least half a year. 

Teaching

It takes time both for teachers and students to get to know each other and I therefore think it would work so much better if they could have the same teacher for a longer period of time. The worst thing is that I don't think it's lack of volunteers that is the problem but that the organization (RCDP) mostly is after my money rather than to actually help the students. If they wanted to help the students then surely they would have sent volunteers to one place for as long as possible instead of sending volunteers to different places for one or two weeks. I would have loved to stay in the monastery for my entire stay and from what I've heard from the other volunteers they feel the same say. We are here partly because we want to learn about other cultures but also because we want to help and support teachers here in Nepal.

I believe one of my strengths as a teacher is my structure and planning so I will try to use this strength and make a plan for the monks, at least for the rest of this year. The plan is not to force volunteers after me to teach something they don't want to teach but I would have liked to have a rough plan to follow just so that I know what has already been taught and what I could teach. I'll try to make the plan this coming week because  I will leave for Kathmandu and then Everest Base Camp on the 7th of October. I don't know if I'm coming back to the monastery in November or not.

I guess I have to mention the flight crash in Kathmandu (http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/flygkrasch-kan-dodat-19-i-himalaya). The flight was heading for Loukla which is the same place that I'm flying to next week. Apparently two planes have crashed on their way there just this year. Scary but I'm sure I'll be fine. I was thinking about going to Annapurna to trek instead but in Annapurna there was an avalanche last week which killed about ten people. So I guess both treks are a bit dangerous, however I'm sure I'll be fine. The thing that worries me the most is actually that I'm spending way too much money. Trekking is really expensive and when I'm in the monastery it costs me $25 extra each month, so these last weeks I've been spending a lot of money. But on the other hand, how often are you this close to the highest mountain in the world? Of course I have to go there.

Julia from Germany, Elli(?) from Taiwan, Margaret from Latvia and me at Manakanama temple

A school we walked past in Manakamana

House in Manakamana

Cloudy view of the mountains

All in all, I'm having a great time, it feels like I can actually help and I've meet a lot of really nice people from all over the world. I hope I will stay in touch with them even after we all leave Nepal. I am doing a lot of tourist things so that I can absorb as much as possible of the Nepali culture and the Nepali landscape. In the picture you can see me and three other volunteers on a one-day-trip to Manakamana, which is one of the most important Hindu temples. The temple is on the top of a mountain and you have to take cable cars up there, unless you feel like walking uphill for five hours. We walked around and saw a small school, a village and a small cave with a Hindu priest in it. 

Goat about to be sacrificed?

Goat 180 rupies

Goats are sacrificed here and you can by a one-way ticket for the goats on the cable cars. It was awful to see the goats trying to fight their destiny and it made us very uncomfortable to be there. I know it is part of their religion and I don't judge them I just can't be around when they kill animals in the middle of the street. The temple itself was not as interesting as we thought it would be and we had hoped to see mountains from up there. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day and we could only see the closest mountains, no ones with snow on them...

More cloudy views

I'm amazed by how friendly people are in this country. Everyone says hi to you on the street and they stay and talk to you all the time. I think I will miss these friendly people when I go back to Sweden.