Daily Life at the Monastery and Teaching Lessons

I've now been living at the monastery for exactly one week and it's been quite the journey. I'm pretty much settled in now with the day to day life here and have recently been learning more and more about the day to day lives of the monks and also how the whole monastery is run. We also have a new teacher on board with us (for the next 2 weeks at least and I'll post about her in the future, she's been a great addition to our team and good for brainstorming lesson ideas).

I am going to attempt in the next little while to go more 'in depth' into life in Kathmandu and in particularly, at the Siddhartha Foundation. I feel that this will help me process the experience and also give you all a deeper and more REAL understanding of what's actually going on in a third world country. It's going to be a challenge to articulate something that one really has to experience first hand, but I will try my best as I believe this is probably one of the largest lessons I will learn in this trip - the realities of living in a third world country, a country that IS considered to have a significant proportion of its population living in "extreme poverty"; more specifically, living with less than $1 USD/day (which is 70 Nepalese Rupees - which could cover some certain basics, such as food, water and potentially shelter as well; depending on where and with whom you live with and if you do your own cooking).

It's also something that I believe that I will process and learn more about, even when I return back to Canada, so I dare NOT say nor claim that I truly know how life is in the third world; all I can reflect on are my opinions and my experiences.

Anyway though, before we delve into this topic (which I probably will in a future post); I wanted to share more pictures of the monks, in the classroom and in their chanting room. Chanting is their primary mode of worship, which they do 2-3x a day; for 1-1:30 hour sessions; sometimes as early as 5:30 am. It is quite the experience, I've sat in on 1 or 2 already. Here are some pictures; they were great enough to be OK with me taking pictures even during such a sacred activity:

NOT the best picture, didn't have flash. The picture in the centre is their Root Teacher, the teacher of Khenpo Rinpoche (however, he has passed away). You can't make it out, but the picture on the right is the Dalai Lama.

This is their chanting room, which is right beside the three larger teaching rooms on the ground level. Holds around 40-50 monks, I'd say.

On a personal level, teaching has gotten a little easier as the kids have grown more comfortable with me. I ended up teaching Classes 3-4 (Approx. age 11-14) about the lives of Jet Li and Jackie Chan (since they loved action movies so much); I put them on the spot, by asking them to do a quick oral presentation on an individual of their choosing; modelling it on biographies that I presented to them. It's been quite a success; and I only have 3 more presentations left for tomorrow. The teaching week goes from Sunday to Thursday; so tomorrow will be the last day of the week; and next week I will teach Classes 5-6 (Approx. age 15-18). I'm strongly considering teaching them about Canadian History, can't hurt learning about the history of the West.

Here are some pictures of my class and the classroom.

Listening intently and copying down notes.

I'm working them hard! Group work, while brainstorming about their individuals. This is on the ground floor of the monastery. One of the larger 'teaching' rooms.

- Julius

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