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April 18-May 1
I arrive in Dharamsala, a hill station at the foot of the mighty Himalayan Plateau. “Dharamsala” means pilgrim’s rest house, and since 1959 it has aptly lived up to its name by serving as the center of government and culture for the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan population fleeing the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
The town itself has perhaps 5,000 permanent residents and six roads that radiate from the central taxi/bus stand. It is now more Tibetan than Indian, and has earned the nickname “Little Lhasa”, after the capital of Tibet. The town is now a center of Tibetan Buddhism, which is a philosophy rich in dialectic thought, and even the town name gets in on the fun. It is officially named McLeod Ganj (after a British officer) but nearly everybody calls it Dharamsala. If it is referred to by its official name it is always as “McLeod” and never McLeod Ganj. Dharamsala itself is a much larger town down in the valley, but here that town is called Lower Dharamsala (the inference being that this is Upper Dharamsala) but I have never heard anybody say “Upper Dharamsala”. The guidebook that every traveler uses says
the real pronunciation of the town name is “Dharamshala”, but again I have never heard that used. Every traveler here comes to Mcleod Ganj but you’ll only ever find Dharamsala on the maps.
The town is a living testament to poured concrete and rebar, and even the main temples and monasteries are rather uninspired piles of weathered cement. An earthquake devastated the area in 1906, and perhaps as a result of this very few structures are taller than 2-3 stories, although the newer guesthouses are larger and, as a result of limited space, perched precariously on steep hillsides.
As a result of tremendous respect for the Dalai Lama and the peaceful and patient response of the Tibetan people to the military occupation of their homeland, I had decided before travelling to volunteer by teaching English here for a couple of months. I arrived on Wednesday morning and on Thursday morning went to a local organization that helps to place volunteers. They immediately told me they have two teachers leaving as soon as next week, so I talked with those two teachers that day and then sat in on their classes on Friday to get some idea of what
I was in for. In the It’s a Small World After All Department, one of the teachers was a recent graduate of Macalester College, a small private school in Minneapolis that my brother, grandfather, and great aunt all attended. The following Monday I taught my first ever class.
“Good morning, class. My name is Doug and I’ll be your English teacher for the next two months.” With those words I worked more than I had over the last six months in the states (Hey, there was skiing and climbing to be done).
This advanced class consists of 20-25 students, half of them lay people and half monks; all Tibetans in their 20s and 30s except for a few Japanese women who wanted to continue learning English. All the students sit on the floor as there are no chairs or furniture whatsoever in the room. The room itself is about 12 feet by 40 feet with yellow walls and green carpet. An inexplicable arch spans the middle of the room. Construction, of course, is cement. Windows open onto Jogibara Road, and from these everything finds its way into the room - sun, rain, wind, car horns, shouting, selling, music,
wasps, and swallows. A world map, tapestries with sayings from the Dalai Lama and a few illustrations of influential Tibetan Buddhist masters adorn the side walls. The national flag of Tibet (outlawed by the Chinese) is on the back wall and a large dry erase board is at the front, under a picture of His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama.
And it is here that I stand, bowels beginning to quiver as I receive answers to my first question of “What is the hardest thing for you to understand about English - or what is it that gives you the most problems?” Not knowing what to expect, nearly every answer is “grammar”. And not just “What is a noun?”, but rather “I have problems with past perfect continuous verbs” and “I still don’t understand relative clauses”.
At this point I’m thinking “bloody hell, what have I gotten myself into?”. I vaguely remember something that sounds sort of like “past perfect something or other”, but that was 30 years ago. So this is how it’s going to be - I travel half way around the world to look like a completely ignorant fool in front of a room of complete strangers who already know better English than me. Well, I muddle through the rest of the class, finish the day with some vague threat like “Remember, the teacher is always right” and then run to the library at the volunteer organization to grab the first grammar book I can find.
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