Three day update

There’s a slight problem. I haven’t written about any of the things that happened for the past three days. Now you may think; but Charlotte can’t you remember what you did? And to that I say, I have a terrible memory. Okay, I may be able to remember school stuff well, scientific concepts ect. But if we watch a movie together and a year later you mention a quote from the movie, expecting me to remember I will stare at you with a blank face. This has led to various people thinking that I’m a fraud… “hey have you seen the movie Memento?” to which I reply “yeah I have” (and I swear I actually have seen it) this is then followed by a whole story about the movie and a question “what was your favorite part?” my reply is silence… I don’t remember anything. So of course the person thinks I am lying about seeing it but wallah I’m not! It’s just this damn memory… The thing is I remember things that happened but not the order in which they happened. All the moments are just a blur, not a timeline. Same thing with these past three days.

What I do remember are these moments:

Me trying the herbal medicine for the first time. I’m sitting there at the desk in my room looking at these balls of dried herbs not knowing what to do. Then just as I’m about to start chewing them my neighbor Tenzin walks by. He stops me and tells me that I shouldn’t just eat them like that! The stuff would end up being stuck in my teeth all day. He quickly ran to his room and brought me this thing with which I can grind the herbs up into a powder and then drink it with water. Even as a powder the medicine tastes so so so bitter, thank baby Jesus that Tenzin saved me just in time; I would’ve probably had a stroke if I’d chewed them up.

I was feeling a bit better and decided it was time to clean the room (mom, you would've been so proud). I ended up reorganizing the whole room; moving the small table to the other side of the room and the shelves somewhere else as well. Whilst attempting to move the thousand kilo shelves I discovered that there were a ton of books on the bottom few shelves. They looked ancient. This discovery was followed by me feeling like a detective. I took all the books out and saw that most of them were Japanese, I looked at the notebooks and saw neat handwriting, I found a huge bottle of shampoo and conditioner which looked super old, incense, a dried up Buddhist butter lamp… there were even letters dated from 2009… so feeling all CSI I pieced together that a Buddhist Japanese woman probably lived here 4 years ago and that ever since she left the people who took over this room (the other English teachers before me; Emily, Jeff ect) did not bother to clean any of the stuff up. So I felt it was my duty to do so. There was so much stuff, I didn’t want to throw any of it away so I put as much as I could under the bed, but there wasn’t much space there either because previous people had been putting their crap that they didn’t want to take back with them under there too… cassette tapes, travel bags, pillows… So there I was left with a ton of books for which I had no space

The same day I decided I should clean up the monastery ‘library’ as well, I mean I had wanted to do that ever since I saw it for the first time (it was a hot mess) and now that I had to put all these books somewhere I figured now was the time. So I spent around one and a half hours cleaning up the library. And damn it looks so good now; all the books are on the shelves according to their size and whether they’re travel, dharma, language or literature. Whenever the monks would walk in whilst I was cleaning up they looked at me as if I was a crazy person; I don’t think anyone had ever cleaned up the library before.

The sketchy internet place with the
best spiced tea

Paldin informed me that there is an internet café literally 2 minutes away from the monastery. I have been walking those 10 minutes to get to the back of that sketchy shop for the last few days for nothing! So one of the afternoons he took me to the internet place. It was filled with boys Mathijs’s (my little brother who is 12) age… and they were all playing counter strike! It felt a little like home. It was okay but I ended up missing the older woman and man who would always be so nice to me. The next day I had to go upload a blog post and I decided to take the 10 minute walk anyway, being welcomed by them with their smiling faces and having the delicious spiced tea is totally worth the walk.

Yesterday I went to Boudha with Paldin (I swear Paldin is like my main man, he’s probably my best friend here… most of the other Yogi’s are on retreat, meaning they’ve taken a vow not to leave the monastery for a couple of weeks/months, so Paldin and I usually end up venturing together). We went to have tea at this newly opened Spanish restaurant of which Paldin knows the landlord, and we ended up staying there for the next 2-3 hours! They are so nice and welcoming, they gave us tons of free Spanish food (I could only eat the gazpacho though; yum) and I met new people! I had a long conversation with two really nice girls from the US (of course I’ve forgotten their names) and we exchanged email addresses, we will probably meet up some time in the near future. After we left the restaurant Paldin and I finally went pant shopping. It is my goal here to buy so many pants that I will never have to wear jeans again. I mean I can get pants here that look socially acceptable but that feel like pajamas; what else could I possibly want in my life? So we bought 2 pairs and then had a small snack at a Tibetan restaurant café… then we left back home with the super crowded bus.

Oh yeah! Classes. When I was sick I came up with a great idea; instead of teaching one new thing every class I wanted to try to do week projects. This is because that day that I wasn’t feeling well and just did very slow classes the kids worked super well; they work best when they have lots of time. I figured I don’t have a syllabus to work by, why am I putting pressure on these kids to learn something so quickly if we can just take a long while to do it, and they’ll enjoy it! So for class 1 and 3 I decided we would make posters about our favorite animals. The first day we would draw, the second day I’ll teach them adjectives to describe the personalities of the animals, the third day I’ll teach them emotions, so they can describe how the animals make them feel, then the next two days I’ll do colors and sizes and the last day they’ll have to present their animal to the class. In the end we’ll have so many posters that I can finally make the empty white room look somewhat like a class room! For class 2, the advanced class, I decided that we would write biographies. I put everyone in random pairs of two; they’re partners writing each other’s life stories. We spent the lesson writing questions for the interviews which we will conduct the next two lessons. This was followed by everyone getting super excited “oooh miss, we are reporters now???” After the interviews I’ll show them how to structure the story and then for the next few lessons they’ll write write write. The last day of the project they’ll present their stories to the class. This way they practice speaking (asking the questions and presenting), listening (writing notes during the interview) and writing! I’m actually really excited about it all, I’m ready to just do my own thing and be creative instead of follow the previous teacher’s lead (what I tried to do the first week with the exercise books, it just wasn’t working).

I think that that’s all I’ve got. I’m busy writing another post for the blog in which I’ll explain a bit of Buddhism to you!

Well, I was supposed to leave to the VIN office in a couple of minutes to have cooking lessons but I’ve just been informed by the monks that there are no busses and no taxis at all today! Apparently there is a strike. I guess I’ll just have another quiet day at the monastery… which I don’t mind at all!

Charlotte x