Arriving monastery

Finally something to publish, I have had some technical difficulties and still cannot add any pictures. But some I have already added to Facebook and Instagram, so I think no worries. I have written every day since I arrived but I thought it's better start now with my first day in Manjushri Di-Chen Buddhist Learning Center (MDBLC). I will write later about my first week in Nepal and in Kathmandu.

The road to Pharping was something I've used to in Nepal so far: pumpy, dusty and dangerous. It was only 20 km from Kathmandu but it took almost 1,5 H to get to Pharping. At first bus climbed up veeery slowly almost to the middle of a mountain and then just a bit down which was really nice at least for me. As higher up the road was narrow and close to the edge, so it was terrifying to watch out of the window. The soundtrack in the bus was driver's favourite collection of Indian Bollywood movie music and as loud as you can imagine. But good and very hyppy music, no complaints.

In Pharping me and Green Lion Nepal coordinator had to walk around 1 km to MDBLC from the bus stop and all the time up which was pretty nice with my backbag, in hot weather and my stomach a bit upside down (I blame pizza on Thursday in Thamel). First I was taken to my room (private room this time, only option here), my room is on the top of the class rooms in a separate building. Then my coordinator Bhuchung in MDBLC took us to the administration office to have a cup of tea (here always with milk) with local bread, like Finnish tippaleipä. Bhuchung came to MDBLC in 2001 but he studied in India for 9 years and then came back. He is very calm, nice guy, smiles very easily and I got the feeling that he really thinks what he wants to say.

I had only one class after tea with class IV. Boys in this class are from 11 years up to 18 years, most of them 14-16 years, all together 11 boys. I would say teenagers in some ways but more polite and talkative than Finnish ones :) Today it was all about telling names and ages, I also told something about Finland and promised to show Finland in a map in the next class. Boys' English level was in better than with the beginners so I communicatd with them pretty well: some are better, some not so good. They wanted to know some English sentences and words in Finnish and this created a lot of laugh in the class but their Finnish pronounciation was really good. Almost all the boys love football and they laughed a lot when I couldn't say my favourite football player and I didn't know who is Bale. I had to google him and now I know: he's Gareth Bale.

School etiquette is very polite: when I enter the class room, boys stand up, I'm called miss (all the time, also outside the class room), if someone is late, permission to enter the class room is a must, also when leaving the class room in the middle of the class and boys don't leave the class room until I'm out. Few days later I said to my class VI boys that it's a bit hard to get to used to these very polite manners, they just looked at me like "why" and explained that this is because they respect me as I'm their teacher. What can I say, better just get used to it and be very humble about this respect. Of course during the class "boys were boys" and few times I had to ask them to be a bit more quiet as all were talking at the same time and it was hard to hear questions but I really liked the energy in the class, openness and laugh. It will be interesting to see how these boys will keep up their interest in English conversation for 4 weeks and how I can manage to provide them interesting and nice classes. But I'm at the same time pretty sure we will manage even if there is not much in common with our worlds, it's so easy to get along with these boys.

(And sorry about all the mistakes at the beginning of the text, I cannot get back to that part to correct them :))