ESL, Law Students and a Little Trekking Around Town

So I've taught my first few lessons of English to the monks and realized how difficult it really is to be a teacher. My respect and appreciation goes out to all my friends and colleagues who do this as a profession, I've only done it for a few days and it is quite challenging. It's interesting because most of these kids are quite smart and know Nepali and/or Tibetan pretty well. However, they don't have the confidence nor the practice in English to be totally fluent.

It reminds me actually of the first year of law school, where we have EXTREMELY intelligent individuals (1st year law students); struggling to understand the 'legal language'. I just had a taste of how some of my professors must have felt, explaining a concept and then looking into the crowd of a bunch of blank faces, no one really willing to give an appropriate answer. So there you have it, 1L Professors, I appreciate your efforts and patience!

Here's some random pics of the Centre. I really need to take some pictures of the kids while I'm teaching.

This is Thupten (finally got his name); just lying in the middle of our room.

These pics are just of Dennis messing around with the sleeping dog!

Today I also went on a little trek with my colleagues, to the local Lord Vishnu Centre, see pics below.

Lord Vishnu in a pond, in the middle of the Hindu Temple. The monks tell me that the story goes that his figure came down from the Heavens and hence was NOT man-made. At least that's the story!

Scenes from the Temple.

Don't have much else to articulate right now; just have been busy planning lessons. Please leave comments and share with others! That's how I tell people read the blog and motivates me to write more (This is the first time that I've been blogging consistently)!

- Julius