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Published: April 21st 2007
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Wrestling
The perfect opportunity to perfect the chokeslam. Buddhist monks who love WWF, surreal The last couple of weeks have been really good. Life at Tashijong is brilliant, the weather's getting hotter and we're getting really busy.
Our teaching load, Bhaarat's especially (but he had less to start with anyway!), has increased quite a bit. We now have a load more private classes with monks from the philosophy school which has now broken up for a 2 month holiday giving them lots of free time. It's good fun, they mostly just come for conversation lessons... so a chat... when we're free in the afternoon. That or they come with questions or a book giving us very little/no prep work. Birma (who's going back to Tibet soon to re-establish his monastery that was destroyed by the chinese), Jimmy, Kidup and Lekshi are the usual crew and they're all a bunch of legends really. Birma is amazingly focussed on helping Tibet and is only around for another month having got the Dalai Lamas approval to go ahead with his monastery plans, he's also really nice and explains anything buddhist we care to ask him. He also took us to visit nearby Sherabling Institute which is massive and pretty (it looks a bit like a holiday
park with it's bushes and flowers), he also wants to take us to Bir, another large Tibetan settlement, soon. Jimmy and Kidup are cool; Jimmy knows lots of useful stuff about where to find good swimming spots, food, etc, while Kidup is the man for football results and when it's on tv out here. Lekshi is hilarious, his English isn't as good as the others but he comes with this awful old child's detective story he's reading and always wants to know the English for stuff like 'fart' or 'retard'. He also brought us back some Indian sweets from a nearby fair the other day. We're spending quite a bit of time with these guys at the moment and it's all a lot of fun, I was going to go to the fair with them today but I had to come to McCleoud to book our bus to Delhi for when we travel in the May holiday.
School life is going swimmingly too, the other week it was baking hot and all the lamas asked for the afternoon off. The Schoolmaster said yes and we all went for a picnic at a nearby river - just how school should
Swimming
You'd never see this in English schools be. There was cricket (until we lost both balls over the cliff edge), football, swimming in the river (not visibly dirty either) and just general dossing about followed by some chai and chapathis as a mid-afternoon snack brought over by some of the older monks. The younger lamas were getting rowdier as it got hotter but they're all good now with the introduction of my 'Star Lamas' chart and the promise of a prize to the winner - pack of Haribos should do.
Last weekend we came up to McCleoud to be a bit more sociable with the other gappers up here (to be fair it is a 3/4 hour journey for us!) and had a really good Indian meal followed by a few drinks and crashing in Dunners' room (he teaches at kirti monastery, right next door to the Dalai Lamas complex - previous gappers even got to meet him!). This was good on the saving-money side but not the most comfortable night ever with 5 of us sharing his room! I also picked up a nice Indian-style shirt which is so much lighter than anything I've got... pretty useful as it keeps getting hotter.
Things are
coming together travel-wise too, we've booked our train to Bangalore and we've finally got our flight tickets to the Andamans after harassing the travel agent for nearly 3 weeks ("yes sir, you will havit tomorrow sir" - bollocks)!
On the downside mosquitoes are starting to appear at Tashijong and seem to prefer the taste of me to everyone else in India! Buggers, but we've cut up a mozzie net and put it over our windows so we can leave them open. Another downer is Bhaarat's increasing addiction to Nutella, I've been sent with money this weekend to pick some more up for him. It's also proving pretty hard to get any info on paragliding which supposedly happens at Bir (near us) but I'm sure someone somewhere actually knows something about it, asking isn't much good as even if people don't they're too polite to say so and will make something up instead!
Excitingly We go travelling in 3 weeks and up til then we're pretty busy with trips to Bir, McCleoud (Baijnath too of course for tikkis) and the possibility of paragliding and Katie coming to vist!
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