Starting up

The schedule here in the monastery seems to be the following:

5:30 Wake up
6:00-6:45 Puja (praying)
7:00 Breakfast (available until 8:00)
8:00-9:30 Self study and free time
9:30-11:00 Classes
11:30 Lunch
12:00-13:30 Self study, cleaning, some free time
13:30-15:30 Classes
15:30-15:45 Afternoon tea
15:45-17:15 Classes
17:30 Dinner
19:30-20:30 Debate practice (Mon-Tue), Tibetan reading (Wed-Thu), praying (Fri)
22:00 Silence

There are differences with the schedule if you are in kindergarten or class 1 but basically the above is followed by everyone. So the youngest ones don't practice debate yet but they learn something else at the same time. This monastery school offers home and education to approx 50 children, mostly coming from remote Himalayan villages. Boys get residence, food, stationary, medicine, pocket money, clothing, expenses to travel home for the holidays and other important needs free of cost. Not all of them will be monks, some will decide to go back to "normal" life.

I teach all together six classes, normally teachers here have 4 h per day but as I'm the only volunteer at the moment, I have more classes. My classes are kindergarten, classes I-IV and VI (no V class this year). Classes VII-VIII can come to talk with me if they want. So far only one boy from class VIII has come to talk with me, other ones just say "hello miss". Either they are not so interested in English or they are just shy :)

This first day was to get to know with each other and play Hangman, boys love it. It was really difficult to figure out what to do with kindergarten class but I then decided to sing with them "Open, shut them" and play along the song. Good choice, they loved it. It will be interesting to teach kindergarten and classes I-III as we definitely have no common language. There is no teaching guide I could follow so I must figure out the content of my classes just by myself. Luckily wifi works so it's easy to find out tips in internet but how then to explain to these boys what I want them to do... But luckily these boys are so nice and also some boys in classes I-III know English better, they can then explain to others. Classes IV and VI are a bit easier because they get pretty well what I try to say. It seems to be the same here as in Finland: boys know grammar and vocabulary pretty well already from class II but speaking English in not the main thing in this schooling system.

My first impression is that boys are really funny and energetic. Especially in the kindergarten class (also a little bit in classes I-II) I had to step in between small "fights" and they loose attention very easily which is very understandable as this is their first year in school and days are long. And when they loose attention, starts kicking, slapping etc. and then few seconds later they are friends again. It's really hard to believe that youngest ones are 7 as they look like 4-5 years old. As mentioned at the beginning most of the boys come from Himalayan villages so they can go home only couple of times per year. This school is their second home and all boys are good friends together, nobody is left out. I noticed that already during my second day, pretty amazing situation compared to Finnish schools. In classes III, IV and VI there are no fights but they really try to cheat on me, about everything and they just say "just kidding, miss" :) And at the beginning of classes other boys want to come to class room even if it's not their class, just for fun of it. "Hello, miss! Can I come in, miss!", then a biiig smile and my class starts to scream "he should not be in this class, miss!!!" This happened like before every class (and still continues).