So...this is a blog about my summer in Boudha

Well, I’ve been here for nearly three weeks, so I suppose I need to post to this blog before my inclination towards procrastination ossifies the project completely.

My first week was mostly taken over by jet lag and orientation. Unlike language programs at Tibet University, this program actually offers orientation, which was surprisingly organized and useful. It’s like being at an actual school – imagine!

As far as that goes, the course has proven to be remarkably effective as well. In addition to learning a lot of new things, in only one week, I’ve remembered so many things that I lost during my five year hiatus. I even reunited with the woman who taught my private lessons five years ago, when I unexpectedly arrived in Kathmandu for one month. She is also employed by the shedra as a conversation partner. She told me that my Tibetan had gotten really bad, but that I was getting it back very quickly. She is a former nun who likes to make jokes constantly, even in the dharma conversation class, so I am always excited when I get to work with her.

We have two hours of conversation partner work every day, which is just unheard of as far as my experience goes. (Of course, I had that much conversation in Lhasa, but it was usually about food or Korean TV dramas that the girls who worked at the university liked to watch.) In regular conversation, people rarely correct you because they are just trying to have a conversation. If they get your general meaning, they just keep talking. However, “conversation partners” are supposed to correct you and teach you new things. This doesn’t always happen. What usually happens to me is that a partner realizes I sound like a Tibetan from Lhasa, and that is so shocking to them that they don’t bother to correct my grammar. My conversation partner yesterday just kept smilling and saying “hang sang byung,” which means “I’m shocked!” He said that I sound like a Tibetan girl…but unless people correct my grammar I will always sound like a five-year-old Tibetan girl.

Changing language partners is another excellent strategy that they use here. Instead of being assigned one language partner for the whole summer, we switch every day. In the advanced course here, we have four classes: a grammar, or colloquial Tibetan, class, followed by conversation partners; and a Buddhist text class in which a Khenpo (a monk who has finished the shedra education program at the monastery) reads through a text and explains it (in Tibetan), followed by a conversation partner class in which we discuss what the khenpo taught us. Some of the conversation partners are monks, but most of them are people who have studied Buddhism for one reason or another (former monks and nuns, college students, I guess).

So…on the apartment search front, I found one immediately that I thought was really wonderful. Then events took a sinister turn...During my first week of classes I had a crisis, entomological in nature. Those of you who know me, which is all of you because you wouldn’t know about this blog otherwise, will recall that I have an entrenched and highly irrational fear of large insects. Last week, three-inch-long flying cockroaches entered my apartment and terrorized me, forcing me to sleep in a wicker chair on the porch (with the mosquitoes). I’ll spare everyone the details, but after two nights, I bugged out, forgive the pun. I am now living in a room in the same house I stayed in five years ago, so it feels like home. Also, the kitchen is separate from the bedroom. If the bugs want to play at night, I don’t have to participate. There isn’t the nice view of the stupa that I had at the last place, but I can see the roof of the swanky Hyatt! (and all of the mountains around Boudha). It also comes with some very colorful neighbors with whom I share a bathroom and a kitchen. They are leaving on Friday. More about them later….

Oh, yeah, so Boudha. Boudha is the neighborhood in Kathamndu where I am staying and studying. It is somewhat removed from the bustling downtown area, and things are pretty calm out here. Everything closes down around 9:30 pm, so there isn’t a lot of night life. On the other hand, people are out on the street at 5:30 am. It was nice to go walk around the stupa that early when I was jet-lagged. But now I’m back to my old ways of struggling to get out of bed before eight o’clock. I don’t have class until 11:30 am, so this is fairly difficult for me. The neighborhood is really nice in the morning, though. The shops aren’t open, yet, so vegetable and fruit sellers set up their things and hang out for a while.

Time for class…I apologize if the writing is less than compelling, but I have to start somewhere. More to come…

P.S. The pictures above are of my old (roach infested) apartment and the view of the stupa from the porch. I am html illiterate, so I can't figure out how to post them through out the entry.