Week One

Learned Truth: Order arising naturally from chaos brings balance. Order unnaturally imposed on chaos brings conflict.


Day 4


There was some issue with flying directly into Dharmsala so we flew into Jammu Kashmir. Yes THE Kashmir. The airport was like a military bunker. There’s a picture of the entrance in this week’s photos. Can you tell which one? We walked past a guy in his car with an AK47 in between his legs. This wasn’t a military person or police or at least they weren’t wearing any uniform. It was pretty intense. The border out of Kashmir was something out of a movie. Tanks, lots of soldiers with machine guns and rows and rows of trucks waiting to be inspected lined the road to the border. The truck drivers wait there for up to four days. Our driver had to park and walk up to some soldiers. I’m not entirely sure but I think he had to bribe the soldiers to let us though. Our guides were definitely keeping us in the dark about what was going on. I wasn’t able to take pictures at the border. Sorry.

Well, after we got out of Jammu Kashmir we were in a much more peaceful state, Punjab and then soon we got into Himachal Pradesh and finally arrived in Dharmsala. Its high up in the mountains and when we weren’t in populated areas it reminded me of the Santa Cruz mountains. Every so often we would pass though a town. They were all basically the same. There would be what amounts to an Indian strip mall with a fruit stand, hardware store, clothing store a cafe and a liquor store all in that order. It was too dark for pictures by this point unfortunately. There were also lots of cows.

There are cows all over the place. I asked the driver if the cows had owners and he said that some may but most are stray cows. I’ve never heard those two words put together. Go ahead say it, stray cows. Doesn’t it sound ridiculous? On the roads cows have the right of way in all situations. A cow can stop an entire highway and all people can do is gently try to convince the cow to move. Yes there are cows on the highway. I took a video of us driving down a stretch of highway and you’ll notice us weaving around a pair of cows. I’ll try to upload it to You Tube if I have the time and bandwidth.

So anyway, we made it to the house in Dharmsala just as a storm was coming though. We’re located on the side of a mountain overlooking Kangra Valley. I stood on the patio of the house with an unhindered view of the valley with the Himalayas rising up behind me. I watched the lightning and waited for the thunder to eventually catch up while scattered warm raindrops fell on me. Yes, it was an awesome welcome.

The next morning we went to orientation and then to our placements. I’m working with Pam at a preschool. Chelsea and Andrea are working in a different preschool. The four of us rode together. We went to their placement first and got an introduction to an Indian preschool. There were eleven kids ranging in age from two to four. We stayed as Chelsea and Andrea were introduced to the teacher and students. Before we left the teacher asked one of the students to count the people in the room. The little girl got up and walked around the room touching everyone’s head as she counted. Another student stood up to do the same. The preschool was mostly what I had expected. Its in a brick building with electricity and running water. There were pictures on the wall of the alphabet, numbers, body parts and animals; all the things we are supposed to be teaching. The teacher maintained discipline and the kids were well behaved. Then Pam and I went to our preschool.

Our preschool is in a shed with a roof that can only barely keep light out. There’s no electricity and no running water. Its not so much a preschool as it is a daycare. It’s run by an older lady, Indu. She’s more of a grandmother than a teacher. The kids mostly run around doing what they want with what little they have. There’s actually little expectation of teaching anything. Oh all the kids are Indian, not Tibetan. I ended up in a placement in a totally different part of Dharmsala. There were three kids. Two girls, Sneha and Sajaya, and a boy Ayush. Sneha was terrified of us. Sajaya and Ayush slowly warmed up to us and began to play. Sometimes the teacher would point out a student and say each letter of the alphabet with the child repeating each in tandem. They can repeat just fine but they can’t recite the alphabet on their own. Its an exercise in futility. There’s really also very little discipline. The kids go off and do their own thing and that’s OK. I was a little worried.




Days 5 to 8


On the second day there were only two kids at the daycare, Ayush and Sajaya. Sajaya was sick. She had a fever and was listless. Pam held her the entire day. When we were leaving she tried to wake Sajaya up but she would not wake. Her eyes were rolled back in her head and she wouldn’t respond to stimuli. That scared the hell out of us but the teacher thought nothing of it. She grabbed Sajaya from Pam’s arms and put her on the floor. Sajaya definitely had a fever and her pulse was racing. When her mom came we tried to bring that to her attention but she gave us a nasty look and stormed out with Sajaya over her shoulder. Pam and I had no idea what to do. No one seemed to care.

I woke at 5:00 the next morning for a hike up to a Hindu temple on a mountain near our flat. There were six of us on the hike. We made it to the temple just as the Baba (priest) was opening. He lives there. He actually cannot leave. He was talking with us about the British, an Indian Nobel Prize winner and about the holiday that was on that day commemorating the third day past the new moon. He also told us about Heaven’s Temple that was at the peak of the mountain. We tried to get to that temple but ran out of time.

Pam and I were still worried about Sajaya. We went to our daycare thinking the worst. We arrived to see her up and about playing and there were two new students, Sanjin and Akosh. We were relieved to see that Sajaya was OK and that there were more students. We brought iPod speakers with us and played Grateful Dead’s Touch of Gray on a loop. It seems to have somewhat of a calming effect on the kids and every so often we would get them to dance. We also started teaching the alphabet for real by just focusing on one letter, A. The teacher wasn’t happy with that and went right back to repeating the alphabet letter by letter with each student. Once that farce was complete Pam and I pushed on with our focus on just A. We tried to get them to write the letter but none of the kids can do anything with a crayon besides scribble broad strokes. Sajaya can at least make lines and circles.

Chelsea, Nicole, Anna and Angela ended up with traveler’s diarrhea. Chelsea had to stay in the hospital overnight. Angela also had a cold making her experience more of a hell. Everyone beside Angela got over it after a day. Angela took two days. Everyone is destined to get it. Its kind of a rite of passage here for Westerners.

I went into the Tibetan area for the first time on Thursday with Nicole and Debbie. We first had tea on a mountain top terrace with an amazing view. After tea we went to the Temple. As we were walking down we heard the monks chanting. It was quite amazing. We arrived at the temple just as services ended and watched the monks stream out of the temple. There were also laymen walking with the monks. Debbie stopped one of the Western layman and asked if they attended the service. They did attend and told us what we needed to do if we wanted to attend. That was pretty exciting. When we got back to the flat we told everyone about that and most of us are going to sign up to attend a service next week. Unfortunately there are no pictures of this. My camera batteries died just as we were getting to the temple.

Two mornings later we tried the hike again up to Heaven’s Temple. This time we made it. Its one of the important temples of the Hindu faith. It is quite nice. The only way to get there is to hike up the mountain. There’s no roads. We got there early as the caretakers were cleaning up so we didn’t really get to see much but the views from that high up were amazing. We’re going back during the a weekend day to take in the whole thing.

On Saturday I got sick. It wasn’t so bad because I learned what to do to make it go by as painlessly as possible. As soon as I felt rumbling in my stomach I took an antibiotic and Imodium. Still I was on the toilet at least twenty times over the day. When I wasn’t on the toilet I stayed in bed and slept. By Sunday morning I was fine and back to normal.

This leads me to right now. Today we’re all going to a major Buddhist temple. There’s no work today. Life is good. I’m putting the pictures on a different page so that the blog loads better. Click here for this week’s pictures. Sorry the images aren’t labeled. I don’t really have the time to be that cool. When I get back I can tell you what is what and who is who. Next blog update in a week...