Feeling settled - let's dance!

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I've now been in India over a month, and at Tashijong for over 3 weeks and I'm really enjoying it. Teaching's become a lot easier and I'm glad to have the ultimate freedom we've been given - no syllabus, no dates, no other teacher in the room, it means I can teach what and how I want, not following a strict plan if one day the class doesn't seem so responsive... after all English for them is one hour of a VERY long day (up at 5, study until gone 7pm), it must be like how I treated art, a nice break from everything else! That said I am feeling now that most of students (the little one's especially) are starting to improve a fair bit even if they are a bit embarassed to use their english outside of lessons!

All the routines, comforts and hassles of life in England seem so far away now, but in turn they've been replaced by new ones here as we carve out a life here, even if it is only for 3 and a bit months - which is seeming terribly short now that we're nearly a month in! Every morning about 9 we head down to samosa wallah (hindi = guy) in the indian part of the village for breakfast where we get samosa, prokora, chenna and imli (sweet tamarind chutney stuff) - delicious. There's no better way to start the day than this mini-feast overlooking the stepped hills and mountains behind bathed by the Sun, and all for 11p! As I said teaching's become really enjoyable and I'm into a routine with Daichen (the lady in the village I tutor) involving tea, biscuits, a chat and occasionaly a bit of grammar work... which is very boring but I'm hoping to persuade her literature will be a better way to improve her reading, spelling, vocab and pronunciation than by ploughing through more pointless advanced grammar! Most evenings we eat at one of the 'restaurants', the lady who runs the one below our room is particularly nice and makes good chow mein for about 25p. We spend a fair bit of time reading (finished 'on the road', next up 'Les Grand Meaulnes' - cheers Katie - then 'Everything is Illuminated' - cheers Pat) or just loiunging about in the Sun listening to Tara's latest complaint about the uselessness of the tibetans in the office... life really runs at a comatose pace her... needless to say this suits me well. Occasionaly we head into the nearby town of Baijnath for a decent internet connection, Bharaat to go to Temple (a really nice ancient one) and most importantly for tikki (like fried potato patties with chilis and amazing flavours dipped in a really sweet imli) and very syrupy diabetes-inducing Indian sweets. Unfortunately no computers out here seem to have adobe which is making my uni decisions very hard as I can't read half the info emailed to me or on the uni sites! I've now got offers from Leeds, York, Warwick, Edinburgh and Durham to decide from - thanks to everyone who let me grab some floor space on my mini-uni tour before I flew out!

Right now I'm on holiday as there are some famous religous dances going on at Tashijong. They started on Sunday with all my little lamas having to dance solo as an exam across the square outside the main temple in front of the rinpoche (chief spiritual guy)... it was cut seeing how nervous they were though once each one had finished they all enjoyed laughing at those still to go! The main dances started on Monday with a big marquee set up over the dance square - which was consecrated by a dnace by the big lamas. First I have to mention just how hot it's getting now, most days are in the high 20s with little breeze - quite nice for us but not so much fun for the dancers in their huge, elaborate, colurful but ever-so heavy costumes! I won't go into detail about the dances as there have been many... all the length of a west-end musical... and they're best described by the photos I've taken. It was weird to see Tashijong so busy though, the place has been rammed with buddhists and tourists alike from all over the place, littl stalls have sprung up and we've even had a few beggars. I quite liked being the token white guy and Bharaat and me feel like we need to show we actually live here sometimes!

Anyway tomorrow we're off to Shimla for the weekend which should be nice; Heather, Hannah and Viveck the ozzie are there to show us round and we'll have a meal out for Heather's birthday at some point.

Hope all's good with everyone back home, I can't deny that the though of a good SOS night hasn't crept into my thoughts at times. Also a belated Happy Mother's Day, Happy Birthday to Joe Moore (he'll grow up like me Julie, don't fight it).

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Comments

[Tori]

A message from your beloved older and infinately wiser cousin
Hi Andy, firstly I wanted to ask, HAVE YOU DONE THE SLINKY THING YET?! If you haven't I insist that you find the biggest flight of stairs you possibly can and get the slinky fun going! Glad you're having such a fantastic time. I won't even pretend I'm not utterly jealous, bitter and twisted that you're travelling and I'm not. Just make sure you take loads of fab photos for us all to see, teach all the kiddies out there some innapropriate English slang, and take care of yourself xxx