Spring

I’ll start by saying that yes, I felt the earthquake, but myself along with everyone I love here in Bhutan are totally safe. The experience was pretty crazy for me, having never felt an earthquake before. It felt like I was standing on a floating dock (the kind they have at GL country club) on a wavy day. A wild realization was that it was the solid earth under my feet doing that, not water. It didn’t last long here in Bhutan and, in my community at least, there is no damage. We were very lucky. However, keep those who died or who are injured in Nepal and India in your prayers.

Now a chunky transition on to more positive topics:

Spring here is such a beautiful season.  – I warned you. I’m not a skilled enough writer to make that transition smooth - Although my friends claim that we are being cheated out of spring and jumping right from winter to summer this year, I don’t mind. It’s still beautiful to me.

I realize everyday that I’m in one of the most beautiful places in the world. If I don’t realize it, I remind myself. I have to, or the 5 am alarm for “Teacher On Duty” days; the students who would like nothing better than to be the center of attention everyday – even if it means being the center of attention while being disciplined; the Saturdays when I remember that everyone at home is enjoying their weekend while I’m still at work (yes we have a half day of school on Saturday); it would all get me down. And believe me, some days it tries to get me down.

But then I look up at the mountains, or down at the vegetable gardens that surround life here and remember where I am and how fleeting this experience is.

My mother told me once that she loves the look of farms. It gives her a sense of security to see massive fields of food growing. I never understood or appreciated that sentiment until now. I’ve stopped looking up at the mountains and started looking down at the farms. How the people of Bhutan have managed to engineer farming on the side of mountains is beyond me, but I am so grateful that they have. Forget about the fact that it provides the food that sustains my life, but the fields are an intricate part of the landscape here. The fields themselves are split into little puzzle pieces falling down the side of the hills and mountains. Inside each field, the soil is plowed and the vegetables planted in rows that turn these farms into textiles. I’ve never before seen the beauty in gardening.

When I first arrived in Thinleygang everywhere I turned there were greens being sold or given to me for free and I ate them almost everyday. That lasted for about two, maybe three, weeks. Now I can’t find them anywhere in town. Their growing season is early spring, before the bugs come to eat their leaves. So now there are new vegetables planted in the gardens and they are just starting to grow.

I realized the other day that it’s already the end of April. I did the math, and I’ve been here for three months. Some days three months feels like nothing, and other days it feels like everything. During the highs I’m afraid for my limited amount of time left here. And during the lows I make an effort to remind myself how little time I have left here.  Bhutan is a land-locked country and once I leave (be it in December, or four years from now) I’ll never be able to experience Bhutan like this again. Sure, I have the opportunity to return as a tourist, but that would be a drastically different experience, lacking the freedom I enjoy so much. 

 

Last Sunday, April 19, my friend Ugyen and I went to the Rhododendron festival. It is a cultural festival that is named for the budding rhododendron flowers. Our students performed dances, skits, and sold homemade gifts. 

Also being sold were traditional Bhutanese dishes. I don't know the Dzongkha word for this, but it's some type of rice pancake with sauce on top of it. I haven't done any better of a job describing it than the picture would have on its own. But no one I was with knew what goes into preparing this dish. It was tasty though :). 

At the festival, there were yak herders selling their goods as well. This yak was standing still as a statue, until I raised my camera to take a picture of it. Then it tried to charge me. In that moment I was more scared than I've been since coming to Bhutan. Thankfully it was tied up and the rope stopped it from running me down! 

The festival was held at a botanical garden about 40 min. from my village. This is my friend Ugyen and I with our homemade necklaces bought from the greening club. 

Then, this Saturday, April 25, we had a school rimdro. This is just like the puja that my house had - a religious holiday meant for prayer and to make offerings to the Gods. This is the alter inside a tent set up on our assembly ground. The alter consists of offerings to the Gods including bowls of water, butter candles, food, wine, and more. Everything seen here has more meaning than I can describe here, or that I completely understand. 

Guru Rinpoche is a Buddhist saint who first came to Bhutan around 700AD and is responsible for bringing Buddhism to Bhutan. 

I tried to sneak this picture of the reincarnation of Guru Rinpoche. He is the head of the Bhutanese church, but currently is still young, studying in a monastery here in Bhutan. 

Another ritual of rimdro is the fire. People burned money, prayers written on paper, nails, and hair. It is believed that burning your nails and hair in this blessed fire will bring good fortune. I didn't throw any money into the fire, but I did pluck out one of my hairs to be burned. 

One of the monks pouring offerings into the fire. 

The disaster management team assembling students on the basketball court after the earthquake. 

Other than ema datshi, I'd say the most offered traditional food here is suja - butter tea. This is how the Bhutanese churn up the butter and salt before adding it to the tea. This is the one Bhutanese dish that I avoid if possible. 

Friends and I during the rimdro. 

Students here love quotes. Classrooms are full of them. 

A couple cuties using all their might to turn the prayer wheel on campus. 

I told you the farms are beautiful didn't I? 

A glimpse down into the valley during a morning walk. 

These little guys are all over right now. Caterpillars and clovers are everywhere I look. I am constantly looking down hoping to find a 4-leaf clover. So far no luck. (pun intended ;) )

Pictures & Notes

Sometimes writing these blogs is easy and there are things I know I want to say. And then other times a lot of things have happened that I could talk about, but I can't write a blog explaining them. The past two weeks have been like that.

I've realized that I have taken so many pictures since being here but I've only uploaded a few. So, since I don't have the words, I'll let the pictures talk for me. I'll even go back in time to pictures I took when I first got here to shed a little more light on my life here.

(I was just looking at this post and discovered that if you click on the pictures they actually get bigger. Who knew?? ...  you probably did)

This is the vegetable market in Paro. The vegetable market that I go to in Bajo looks very similar. I've gone to the vegetable market in Bajo twice now and always stock up on produce. When that runs out, I buy vegetables from Thinleygang. The vegetables in Thinleygang are not very good though and I buy just enough to hold me over until I can get into town again. 

Truck drivers here put so much effort into decorating their trucks. Some even have colorful lights that decorate their trucks for night driving. 

The wood carving in the Dzongs and for many religious articles, such as alters in peoples houses, is incredibly intricate. This is a closeup of a beam in the Dzong below. 

This Dzong is being built in Bumthang. Because it's still in the early stages of being built, we were able to take pictures inside. It's almost all hand carved wood. 

The god of judgement - taken at Punakha Tshechu. On either side of him is a man dressed in all black and a man dressed in all white to signify the good and evil forces in our lives. 

This is one of my favorite pictures I took while in Gasa. The cows here in Bhutan always appear so forlorn - as if they don't know they are standing in arguably the most beautiful place in the world.  

It finally started to rain during the past two weeks. The dust is settling and everything is becoming greener, making this place somehow more beautiful - taken from my balcony. 

The girls and I had to stop one day on our morning walk to school to admire the monastery sitting amongst the trees and clouds.  

Dechentsemo had the Minister of Education pay a visit to our school last week. I asked Dawa (far left) to borrow a ratchu - a ceremonial scarf. She asked which kira I planned to wear for the Minister's visit and then decided that I not only needed a ratchu but an entire outfit, jewelry and all. 

Fellow teachers and I waiting to welcome the Minister of Education to our school. The minister talked to us about the initiatives being taken my the ministry and their 10-year plan to revamp education here in Bhutan.  - more on that to come in a later post. 

By the way, no one here actually smiles in pictures. So if the future pictures of me are lacking a smile, it's because I always feel like a grinning fool standing next these people.  

In order to welcome the Minister, all of the teachers lined up at the school gate. The Minister's car parked just outside the gate and he walked down the line, shaking hands with all of the teachers. 

Lhendup Dorji proud of his egg masterpiece on Easter Sunday. 

Actually painting Easter eggs, rather than dying them, was really neat because it allowed the kids to get creative and use details. This is a mountain landscape that Kinley Pem painted on her egg. 

A few finished eggs and our palette. 

The kids were very excited and quite amused at the idea of painting eggs.  They didn't realize until the end of the day that the eggs were hard-boiled and that they got to eat them after. 

The finished product - beautiful eggs and a group of proud budding artists. 

During tutoring, Tshring started playing with my hair - which I obviously encouraged. Unfortunately it turned into an entire makeover for me. 

Yesterday at school, my friend Lhamo organized a student - parent debate. It was a really cool event where parents who live in our community came by to express their opinions on hot youth-related topics and the students were able to replay with their own views. 

In honor of sibling day that was sometime this week, here is a picture of my family according to one of my students. Just me and my two brothers, enjoying life in our Gho's and Kira's as always. 

And the farthest throwback, to Feb 3. 

A few other notes that I don't have pictures of:

1. The family that owns my house had a Puja last week – or a religious gathering where family comes into town and they pray a lot, sit around and talk, and eat a lot of food. Not far off of what I would have done with my own family if I had been home for Easter, which makes their Puja perfectly timed. I was invited to join them for dinner and even joined them in some post-dinner traditional dancing. 

2. Sam Blyth and a group of BCF’ers and other Canadians also paid Thinleygang a visit. I actually heard the sentence, “Ah Kalamazoo, I know right where that is. It’s not far from my friends who live in Michigan.” WOAH BABY. Someone here in Bhutan who knows my hometown? I was able to show them around school in the morning and have an incredible dinner with them Saturday night.  - - - shout out to Sam, Andrea, and everyone at BCF for making this possible J.

3. I bought my first real kira – no hooks or Velcro for this girl. 

4. And, finally, life goes on. My next goal while here is to immerse myself in my community as much as possible and be more present.

School

If there is one lesson that I have learned over the last three weeks, it is how to be patient.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about how school is going, but I think I’m still figuring it out myself. The third week of school is now behind me and I feel like I still have a lot to learn.

Out of 7 periods in a day, I only have 3-4 classes, and 3-4 free periods. This is a huge difference from the US and has allowed me to do all of my planning and grading at school. Awesome right? I have thirty students in each class, give or take a few, and after being told that I would probably have closer to forty, I feel lucky with that number.

The assembly ground and some classroom buildings. 

As a teacher, my first job is to get through the syllabus. Fifty percent of the students’ final grade comes from two standardized tests, the mid-term exam and the annual exam. The exam material comes directly from the class IV textbook. Going through the text prior to teaching any classes, I wondered how the students would measure up to the curriculum. I quickly found out that most of my students are far behind where the government expects them to be.

My first week of teaching was quite frustrating. I thought I was doing a good job of speaking slowly and clearly, but when I asked a student if the other kids understand me, she said “no mam” and laughed a little. Okay so I knew I had to reevaluate the way that I was speaking. Even when trying to discipline, I found that students don’t exactly understand what I am saying and that it is completely ineffective. To be fair, there are a few students in each class who are more proficient in English and help to translate for their peers.

Another frustration that I faced the first week or so of teaching is the lack of focus and attention that the students display. I would ask students to discuss questions with their partners, or jot down their own ideas on paper before sharing with the class. As soon as I stopped giving instructions, they would start talking to others around the room and playing with rubber bands or ink cartridges.

It took about a week and a half for me to realize that most of the confusion and frustration is my own fault. I walked into class expecting students to mostly understand me, follow directions, and at least try activities, even if it was an exercise that they had never done before. Well that didn’t happen, so I looked at the little things that were working. I’ve noticed that my students are engaged when we do choral or echo reading (reading together as a whole class) or when I ask them to copy off of the board. These are tasks that they are familiar with and tasks that do not require them to understand my accented English.

I may not believe that exercises such as these are the best way for me to teach, but I need to backtrack and start teaching that way if it’s the way that my students learn. I definitely plan to begin to slowly implement change in my teaching methods and begin to incorporate new strategies and exercises, but I need to be patient.

The assembly ground during a passing period. 

Has it only been three weeks that I’ve been teaching? It feels like so many more. Getting my students to where I want them to be is a process, and I need to be patient with the process – easier said than done I’ve found.

It has really surprised me that classroom management is my biggest struggle. I thought that the combination of CPS and Kellogg elementary experience would have prepared me to effectively discipline, even younger students. Today, on our walk home, I had a student tell me, “outside teachers never want to beat the students, but sometimes they need a good beating”. I couldn’t help but secretly admit that I agreed with that ;) 

But the reality is that I will never hit a student. My students know this and take advantage of it. I am working out different positive reinforcement plans and slowly trying to train my students to behave even if I don’t have a stick in my hand. Another process I will have to be patient with.

The hanging metal ring is our school bell. Someone rings it to signal the end/start of each period. 

Other than school, life here is busy! I now have jogging partners and we go at 6:00am every morning. After school, I tutor a number of kids (right now it’s four but the number continues to rise) for an hour or two, Monday-Friday. By the time we are done I have just enough time to make dinner, do some cleaning (because I’m constantly making things dirty it seems), and read or journal a little before bed.

I was slowed down a little this week with a cold that is going around school. I had to remind myself – and be reminded by more than one friend – that it’s okay to skip certain responsibilities like jogging and tutoring, and to get the rest that my body needs. As it always does, being sick brought on the craving for the comforts of home. I had my first real yearning for home food, home showers, and my home bed. Like everything though, that too has passed. 

Although I’ve found my much-anticipated routine, small things continue to change. I wonder when, or if, I’ll ever feel totally settled. But then this is a process too, isn’t it? Patience, and finding peace in the process, will help me to continue to feel happy here. That, and the occasional glass of whisky with fellow teachers after school to take the edge off J

My crazy class 4A students. 

Another One Of Dylan's Videos

Incase you missed it on Facebook, Dylan has created another video of our trip across Bhutan.

Watching it reminds me how incredible these people are and how beautiful this country is.

Enjoy :)

http://youtu.be/Vri25aQyAaY?list=UUviCJGk6cZEOp_87oitXo7g

Holidays

The past two weeks have been filled with celebrations and trips and friends and festivals and hikes and books and naps. I'm really living the good life here :) We have had such an irregular start to our school year because of holidays that happen to fall back to back here in Punakha. Frist was Losar (the New Year), followed the king’s birthday, and then a religious festival called Tshechu.

We did have two and a half days with students at school, however no classes were taught. The days were filled with organizing students into class sections, cleaning the school grounds (which the students did while I was told to “supervise”), and distributing textbooks. We also had a lot of free time and spent it having tea with my 8^th grade girls, discussing differences between life for my students here in Bhutan and students in the U.S., and many lessons for me in Dzongkha.  School was let out on Wednesday, not to resume until the 2^nd of March, which meant that I was faced with 11 days of no school and no plans.

The only time that I really socialize with others in my community is during school. So I knew I had to go out of my comfort zone and make a point to go visit people. I've had many colleagues say things such as “come over for tea sometime during the holiday”. And in my head I respond with, when is sometime? What if I come over and I’m interrupting something? What do people even do here in their free time?? In the end I did manage to get myself out of my hermit hole and was rewarded with successful social interaction! One time I tried to go help a fellow teacher from school who was moving houses. But instead of allowing me to help, she sat me down in the sun with a book and made me tea. It’s not what I intended, but it was a good start!

For the King’s birthday, I went with my principal and a busload of students from my school to a celebration and an exhibition of reading programs that schools are implementing. The celebration happens every year and our students prepared cultural dances to preform for head officials in our district and spectators. The exhibition of reading programs, however, was new. The King has declared 2015 as “Reading Year” so each school is meant to develop a new program that will foster good reading habits and a love of reading in the students. I was sent with the principal as a representative of the group of three teachers that are responsible for developing Dechentsemo’s reading program.  (If I haven’t already mentioned it, Dechentsemo is the name of my school).

Students from Dechentsemo handing the Ministry of Education officials pamphlets and explaining our reading program. 

Along with students, the celebration also had professional masked dancers. 

The boys from Dechentsemo performing their dance. 

I also got together a good amount with fellow BCF teachers over the holiday. One friend, Dylan, was in town to photograph a marathon and he took me on his borrowed motorbike to Sebastian’s place on the other side of the valley. The biggest morale booster that I've experienced sine being here is getting together with friends who are going through the same thing and with whom there is no language barrier. Sebastian and I also took a trip up to Gasa to visit the hot springs and the Gasa Dzong. Gasa is north of Punakha, and significantly colder. The hot springs were lovely, and the view of the surrounding mountains even better.

I have never been so ill prepared for a trip as I was when we left for Gasa. I naïvely assumed that the Gasa hot springs were probably a tourist destination and being such, would have accommodations that tourists would be used to. Luckily, while trying to catch a ride to meet Sebastian and leave in our arranged taxi, my principal picked me up and discovered that we had not brought bedding, food, or anything to cook our nonexistent food on. He made a couple quick calls and we found ourselves stopping on the way to pick up a rug and sleeping bags from my principal’s brother who teaches at a school that’s on the road to Gasa. Then, once there, he hooked us up with his wife and children who also happen to be vacationing in Gasa so that they could cook for us. The guest houses where vacationers stay were booked up, but by a stroke of luck, the manger had some cancellations, or a miscalculation, or maybe it was the deities of Bhutan looking out for us, but he found an empty room for us to stay in. We made friends who drove us in the back of their pickup truck to the Dzong and who cooked us lunch and dinner the second day. If it hadn’t been for the incredible hospitality of the Bhutanese, we probably would have ended up sleeping under the stars in our clothes and surviving off of crackers and oranges.

That being said, I never felt stressed during the trip. Although I’ve experienced a rollercoaster of emotions since being here, stress is not one of them. The couple of times that I have started to feel stressed or frustrated with situations, I realize that I feel even more out of place because no one around me is stressed.

For now I’m off to PunakhaTshechu and will probably have pictures from it next time I blog J

The Gasa guest houses where we stayed. 

Our room inside the guest house. Thank goodness for the borrowed run and sleeping bags! 

The man who gave us a ride back to Punakha from Gasa, me, and Sebastian in front of Gasa Dzong. Although now used for administration offices and monasteries, Dzongs were originally built as fortresses. 

My village of Thinleygang! Taken on one of my hikes. I live in the big pink building on the left.