Day 4: First Conversation Class in LHA

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We had breakfast at 8.30 because we were supposed to meet Rabsel at 9.30 for introduction of the programme and the city. I had banana crepe at Café Budan, and Elena had toast. It's not bad, but the price was comparable to Singapore. Afterwards we met Rabsel, he brought us around and paid for our iced tea with lemon. It’s quite different from ice lemon tea in southeast asia because it was blended and the color was yellow. Couldn’t remember the name of the café. Then we parted ways with Rabsel and we went to Snow Lion for lunch. I had fried cheese vegetable momo (momo is a Tibetan cuisine) and mushroom soup (which is a thickened soup with a few slices of mushroom, not mushroom cream soup), while she had Chowmein (fried noodle with vegetables). Both of the food were fantastic, we would go back for sure. After lunch, we went back to hotel to rest. Then Elena went to Office of Dalai Lama because she has some business to take care of there, while I went around the city and bought a book of Paul Cuelho for 250 Rs only (eqv. 7.5 SGD)! Then we brought our donations from hotel to LHA just before 4pm. After making payment for reception and orientation to the LHA and passing the donation, we had our first conversation class! It’s 4pm every day.

I guess there are more than 20 monks and around 10 Tibetan people who went there to study conversation, while there were around 10 or slightly more volunteers to assist them. I had 2 monks and 1 Tibetan man to converse with. And during that session, I feel so good not being given opportunity to teach a class, because my accent sucks! Initially I was pretty upset I didn’t get to teach the class of my own because I couldn’t commit for 2 months. But now I realize it’s a blessing, really. If I want to be an English teacher in the future, I’ll make sure I have my accent fixed first. You know what, most of the Tibetan people learn English from westerners, so they have pretty good accent. I’m surprised to know that their English is so good. The volunteers have done a great job during these past few years. That’s awesome to see the development in the Tibetan in exile community.

After the class, we were invited by the President of the organization to join a farewell party to a group of students from Louisiana. These students came for 1 month under a mutual learning program managed by this President. They were being paired-up with Tibetan people; they teach English and the Tibetans teach Tibetan culture. Very amazing idea. So we went to the dinner and later to President’s house just to hang out. After that we went home and call it a day.

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