Sick sick sick

It has happened. I am sick. Lying here on my beautiful pink covers (which by the way are covered in flowers and text saying “we have a date”), surrounded by the peppermint green walls in the clammy hot room. I have terrible throat pain, a cold and a probably unrelated weird rash all over my hands, wrists and feet. Of course out of all the possible things I was prepared for (food poisoning, diarrhea, constipation ect) these two things I was not. This is how it all went down…

I was already feeling a bit sick at the VIN office, but I blew it off as it just being my body reacting to being over-tired. When I got back by cab I collapsed into my room and had a good sleep. The next morning however I woke up with a sore throat again. Oh snap! Wait! I have to tell you something about yesterday though! I had my first lesson with the top monk; Tulku Jigme. Holy moly, this man is so wise and so calm. The way the lessons work is that every day at 8:00 am I make my way past the two massive guard dogs (a German Shepherd and a Saint Bernard, both were offerings to him) towards the door of his house. There I knock and wait for Ngodup to open the door and I make my way over to sit on the couch. Tulku Jigme and I talk for about 45 minutes. He has picked a book for me, called Counsels from my Heart by Dudjom Rinpoche. He reads the lectures from the book and then stops to explain it to me in more detail and to answer my questions. It’s so great because I still have the freedom to ask countless questions but there is a structure in the lessons. Wow, it’s kind of crazy to think that one of the most respected monks is teaching me, I feel so grateful (again).

Anyway, so after I was done with the lesson by Tulku Jigme I made my way over to teach the three English classes. This time I taught using the books that all the kids have, it was so boring, I need to find a way to make the lessons fun again. After class I had lunch and then Dinesh the VIN volunteer coordinator came for a visit. VIN is so supportive of their volunteers; I told them I had a problem with the middle class and immediately they come for a check-up and give me tons of tips, trying to help. He gave me advice to make a small test in order to divide the class into different levels or to do the buddy system, where one of the more advanced English speakers gets paired with one of the less advanced English speakers.

After I was done with the chat with Dinesh I asked Chelsea to show me where the internet place is. I found out that there is one spot in the entire village that has internet connection (one of the phone cables was stolen so everyone is internet-less except them). I sat at the back of the hot, sketchy shop for a good two hours drinking delicious lychee juice and uploading the six posts which I had written over the past couple of days. The internet was free, I didn’t even need to buy anything to be allowed to use it, but I did. I ended up seeing that there was a special type of Lay’s chips here; Indian Masala, so I bought that and some peanuts. Damn the Lay’s chips are so good, may or may not have to bring a stash of bags back to the UAE! On the way back (carrying a cute umbrella to protect myself from the burning sun) I went past the fruit shop, bought some mangoes and pomegranates. I swear they have the best mangoes here; SO DAMN GOOD. Then on my way home I bumped into Paldin! He was going on a walk and asked if I wanted to go, of course I said yes.

We walked through the villages; saw the people and he showed me the farms. They can literally grow anything here, the soil is so fertile. There are animals all around, cows, chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits, street dogs. Oh my God, talking about street dogs… okay here I was walking and suddenly I see a group of Nepali girls who are about my age. They stop me and start a conversation with me; I’m here all excited thinking I’m going to make some friends when all of a sudden I feel something on my leg… I look down to find that one of the street dogs is raping my leg… yep… I ended up shaking the dog off and awkwardly shuffling away. The girls were laughing and horrified. I don’t think our friendship will go very far… so much for first impressions.

Paldin and I meandered through the farmer’s houses, up hills and down hills. It had rained the night before so everything was slippery. I was trying to keep up with Paldin, but I was slipping and falling all over myself on the path down the hill. There I am being a klutz when all of a sudden I hear voices behind me. I turn around slowly, making sure I don’t slip again, to find four ladies following the same path as me but with bags of grass carried on their heads! Imagine me there stumbling all over myself trying so so so hard to make it down this hill without slipping and then I turn around to find these women walking with super heavy bags on their heads as if it’s nothing… Yep, typical.

Paldin meditating

So apart from my blunders and awkward moments the walk was awesome. We ended up going to a small restaurant in between the farms. Then I remembered I had cards with me! Paldin showed me some Nepali games and then I invited the restaurant worker to come play the game with us. One of the Nepali games is actually super similar to a Dutch game (pesten!) so I totally surprised them with my mad skills (years of experience of playing the game with my granddad, Opa de Bekker). The restaurant workers invited us to eat some noodles with them; they were so good! Then I had a massive craving for Pokara (my number one favorite thing to eat in Nepal, it’s on the same level of goodness as Momo). Then coincidentally the waiter of the tea house in which I had Pokara for the first time (during the first walk Paldin and I took together) showed up! So we asked him if he could prepare it for us and then we’d walk over to the tea house within 15 minutes.

When we got there we sat at the same tables as before had some black tea and the yummy Pokara. Then we realized we were probably going to miss dinner at the monastery so we decided to order some dinner there. This was the mistake. We ordered Aloo Paratha but it turns out (and no one in the restaurant told us this) that they didn’t have the flour to make it, so we found out they walked all the way to the village to get the flour just so that they could make it for us. We ended up waiting 2 and a half hours for the Parathas, we contemplated leaving but they had gone through all the trouble of getting the flour that we decided we should wait. By this time it was already super dark, then when the food finally arrived it started raining! Oh my. It was so cold and late (I had planned to sleep early so that I wouldn’t get more sick) when we finally left. Thank god that I had my umbrella with me because it was raining like crazy.

We got back at 10:00 pm which is WAY passed my bedtime. And as you guessed, I woke up even more sick in the morning. GODDAMN. I still went to my morning class with Tulku Jigme, by the way I asked him if I could write about Buddhism on my blog and he said of course, he even offered to check whether what I write is correct! So be prepared for some Buddhism! Then I went to my first class, the youngest class. Today was definitely the best class I’ve had since I got here. Because I wasn’t feeling well I just took it easy and we just did one exercise… but I realized that they were having much more fun with no pressure coming from my part (“5 minutes left”) and this class I interacted way more with them, praising their drawing skills (I always make sure we do some form of creativity in the lessons, so today I taught the names of places, airports, hospitals, and I accompanied them by pictures which they all copied into their books!). One thing which totally made my day was that this boy who I had been struggling with, he’d always blow off the activities and not participate, ended up having a complete 180. All I had done different was give him some one on one attention and talk to him about his drawings (he drew a really good peacock, for the word zoo, and I helped him color it). All it took for him to snap out of his rut was some of my attention, it felt amazing to see him change to quickly, and I felt kind of bad that it was my lack of support that caused him to act like that. So maybe being sick isn’t such a bad thing, it made me slow the class down and now I realize that that’s way better for all of them; even for the most difficult student. They just need more of my support, it was difficult to do that at the start though but now that I’m getting to know them I’m actually developing relationships with all of them. It’s great.

Then the next group, the older kids, made their way to the class. It started okay but about 20 minutes into the lesson I was starting to feel really really tired and sick. The monks noticed it on my face and asked whether I was alright. I asked them whether the principal would be okay we me ending the lesson early, they said he was easy going and would understand. So I gave them homework and stumbled to my room where I collapsed onto the bed once again. I had a 2 hour nap and woke up by the lunch bell. I was really feeling too sick to go over to the lunch room so I decided I would just eat the chips that I had bought the day before. Then within the next 20 minutes four monks visited my room all offering to bring me lunch! I feel so so so loved I don’t even know what to do with myself, everyone is so caring and so concerned and so helpful. At tea time the same thing happened. Then Paldin came over with a pot of tea and cookies, we watched a documentary together because I was feeling a bit lonely all trapped up in my room.

The documentary is called Samsara. It is one of my absolute favorites, please please please watch it! It starts very slow, and it takes time for you to get into the rhythm of the film but really the concepts it shows are amazing and thought provoking and it will change the way you look at life. I found out by the way that Samsara is a Buddhist word; it is the opposite of Nirvana, it means life on Earth as we perceive it, including suffering and only temporary happiness.

Then a really nice Japanese lady, Akimi, who is here to also learn about Buddhism came to visit my room. She is so caring, she told me to take lots of vitamin C tablets (which I actually did bring! Hurrah!), drink lots of tea and even offered to take me to the hospital. I told her that I want to wait to see how the rash is tomorrow and then maybe go. I just can’t believe that everyone here is being so kind and supportive… Oh, I just feel the love.

Sick but happy,

Charlotte x