Back and Forth

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I'm sorry to all readers for how long it's been since I've made a blog. First my internet ran out because it was the end of the month, then when I tried to recharge the modem I had another difficulty. It should be working now but I'm in Darjeelign now so I'm just using an internet cafe' which I pay 50 cents for 1 hours use.

Where to start ...

I have already visited the other teachers' placements in Ghum, Darjeeling and Takdah which are all amazing in their own ways. The six girls in Takdah, placed at 2 schools and a buddhist college seem to be enjoying themselves so much which was so great to see when I visited. Takdah is a beautiful place surrounded by Pine forest and tea plantations. The School and buddhist college both look as if they should be in the english countryside, made from stone with triangle roofs. They are completly different to the flat roofed, brightly coloured Indian houses that you see around here. The hour long Puja that I sat in on in the morning and evening here was a really good experience. Also the Takdah buddhist college was the first place I tried the Tibetan food Tsampa which is barley flour with butter, sugar and tea mixed into something similar to cookie dough. It's now one of my favourite meals and I bought 1kg of it from the Darjeeling Chok Bazaar for 40Rs, or 1NZD.

The Sakya Choepheling monastery where I stay's big sister, Guru Sakya in Ghum was also an interesting place to stay with Blake, the teacher there. It's a lot different as unlike the Sakya Choepheling, the monks don't bother to clean the monastery so the walls are getting very run down. Blake and I got up at 4am to climb Tiger Hill, the highest point in the Darj area to see the sunrise but when we got there unfortunately all we saw was hundreds of Indian tourists and a sky full of cloud. The walk balk down through the forest was very peaceful which made the trip worthwhile.

Despite the extremely low chances of ever seeing Monlam Gyatso, a monk from Ladahk that I met in Rimbick, again, I spotted him powerwalking past Sebstian and me in Darjeeling two weeks ago and followed him to the Big Bazaar. We caught up to him and I was very happy that he decided to come to the Hindi film 'Tere Nall Love Ho Gaya' with me, Seb, Michelle and Laurie. He made our night so enjoyable with his kindness and constant joking. He said the reason he was on facebook was to see if Osama Bin Laden was dead or alive and that he had been deleted as a friend by him. Also without his translation we would've had much less of a clue what was going on in the film.

The monastery is up and running fully now with all of the 30 something monks having arrived, apart from the Rinpoche who is having visa trouble returning from America and one other monk. Last weekend Ghendun and I walked up about 45 minutes from the monastery to Samten Gompa where we me two very nice men living there. The monk is a Rimbick born 39yr old who has been there for 11 months and Mark is a German-American who has been learning tibetan in India for over 2 years.



I hope this update was worth the wait for any readers!

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Comments

[Sarah]

Hi George from Aunty :-)
great writing and loving your blog .... Keep it coming!