Last blog from Udaipur, Rajasthan

The Taj Mahal in Agra is an amazing site. The structure is beautiful and is carefully maintained. Approximatel 10,000 people visit this wonder of the world. It is the most expensive admission fee that I have paid so far...Rs 750, just under $20 cdn. Other monuments and tourist areas charged the most Rs 50 each. Aside from the Taj Mahal, the city of Agra is actually quite disappointing. Hagglers were hazzeling us to buy souvenirs and many of them would not go away. The air in the city is the most polluted so far with burning smell and dust everywhere. The hotel room was expensive but was the worst one that I have stayed in.

The SFU program was officially over on December 4th with all of the students stayed back to do further travelling. Melissa, Alex and I flew to Udaipur in Rajasthan and enjoyed five days of vacation. Udaipur is a less populated town with rich history of Maharanas (Indian royalty). The hotel that we stayed in was a very comfortable one with good foods, a nice garden and a swimming pool. We visited palaces in the mornings and enjoyed leisure reading time back at the hotel in the afternoon. We found out that the main courtyard and one of the restaurants in the Maharana of Mewar palace can be rented out to public for parties and weddings. The cost of that is 50,000 US!

As I near my journey in India I have learned that it is the people who give this country so strong. I have interacted with many people and observed them on the streets through my car travels. I am amazed with the resilience of the people. I have seen people sleeping on dusty roads, children selling fruits and magazines on intersections of busy streets, women dressed in saris carrying baskets of rocks on their heads, fruit vendors, barber shop in a box like shop (or just on the road side), young toddlers playing around construction sites, men urinating publicly, people spitting, vast amount of garbage everywhere (garbage bins are rare here), people working in samosa stands, people praying and etc. These are some images that I will never forget. As a foreigner, my initial view was 'how do they live in such harsh conditions?' After talking to tailors, cafe owners, fabric merchants, small grocery store owners, hotel staff, taxi drivers, auto rickshaw drivers, Indian artists etc that I realized these are people are extremely hard working people who value friendship, the strength of their community and their religious beliefs. Although they live in conditions that are very different from Canada they are happy people with very strong family values.

The few cities of India that I visited gave me only a glimpse of the country. I am not sure if I will have the opportunity to return for future visits but I truly learned a lot from the people of India. India, India, thank you for sharing your history, beauty and your people.

I will be flying back to Canada on December 12. This trip also made me realize how fortunately I am to live in Canada. I also missed my family dearly and I look forward to see them in less than 3 days!

Nameste from India!!!!

Rishikesh: Yoga city of the world!

We left Amritsar on Wednesdy and headed south east and arrived in Chandigarh (capital of Punjab) at 7:00 pm. Unfortunately I got food poisioning again!!!!! I now know my body when I get food poisioning...I just totally purged from both ends..haha. Everything came out within an hour and I slept for 14 hours that night. I felt better the next morning and was well enough to go to the Rock Garden...some random rich man decided to spend lots of money to build these rock structures using old plates, toilet bowls, rocks and recyclable stonewares...I actually thought the place was quite senseless a waste of money. The hightlight of that place was actually riding on a camel for 30 rupees (75 cents). Chandigarh is a posh city with many name brand stores with expensive merchandise! The hotel room that we stayed in was the most expensive so far (1500 rupees) and my roommate and I did not even get clean sheets and blankets...luckily I brought my own camping pillow and my sleeping bag!

We left Chandigarh on Friday morning and drove over 12 hours to Rishikesh. We stopped at Missouri which was an old British hill station. It was similar to Dharamsala but without Tibetan settlements. It appears that on Friday was a very lucky day for people to get married as it took an extra 1.5 hours to get to our hotel. There was a wedding happening at our hotel and it went from 8pm to 6:30am!!!!! The band was playing all night and people were running down the hallway throughout the morning. I was awaken at 4:30 am and couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up at 7:00am and did some yoga on my balcony.

The upper Ganges lies between Rishikesh and it is the yoga capital of the world. There are many ashrams nearby where people can develop their spirituality by staying in these places. They would do meditation and yoga and help to take care of the ashrams. A few of us walked to the Gannge River and witnessed people cleansed their sins and offered flower bouquets to the river. The river is very sacred to the people of India and many people from all over India come to perform such rituals. This part of the river is quite clean as the Himalaya mountains are close by. The water further downstream in middle of India io would be a different story.

My body is not liking too much Indian food. The food is usually quite oily and meals usually sit in my stomach for hours. So for the last few meals I have been having just toast (white bread :-( with jam and curd (plain yogurt). Another reason for simple foods is that I do not want to get sick anymore!!!! The oranges and bananas are quite good here so I have been eating lots of fruits. I do miss home and all the veggies and normal home cooking!

The temperature here is warm but comfortable at ~ 23°C. One thing that is hard to get use to is the pollution!!! It is so dusty in India! My nostrils are usually black and my hair is wiry by the end of each day! We will be leaving Rishikesh tomorrow morning and drive 1 hour into Haridwar. We will spend one day there then leave for Jim Corbett National Park which is a tiger reserve.

Unfortunately, all the computers in India are infected with viruses so I can't upload pictures to my blog. I hope to give you update in a few days!

Hello from Amritsar, Punjab

I have been in Amritsar for a couple days now and I am having fun. Amritsar is famous for the Golden Temple. It is the holiest temple in India for the Sikhs. The temple is surrounded by 750 kg of pure gold which was donated by Maharaja Ranjit Singh (a King) back in late 1800s. The temple is opened 24/7 and is a place of pilgrimage for Sikhs from all over India and the world. Many men walked into the pool for a holy dip. It appeared that women are not permitted to dip in the holy water. We went to the temple last night to see it during sunset and got up at 4:30 am this morning to see it at sunrise. It is a gorgeous place. My friend Melissa has a nice digital camera and we were playing around with her camera and had some really neat shots...doing yoga pose next tot he temple! The only thing that I did not like about the experience is that we had to take off our shoes to enter the temple. The marble tiles were very cold!

People in India do not see foreigners very often and treat Caucasians and foreigners like movie stars. They wanted to pose pictures with us and asked to shake hands with us. So far,this is true wherever we go in India. The food has been great and I have had praranthas with paneers (fried breads with curried cheese), lassie (yogurt drink), veg pizzas. The cooking oil they used seemed to be very heavy as the meals kind of sat in my stomach so I have only eaten 2 meals a day.

A few of us rode on cycle rickshaws to go to the market and we had a lot of fun...I video taped it and it was hilarious. Traffic in Amritsar is just as crazy as in Delhi. The city is very dusty and the air is filled with smog. There are many dried fruit stores where they sell almonds, walnuts, dried mangoes, masala tea spice and peanut brittle. The fruits here are excellent with juicy oranges at 25 rupees (60 cents per kg ), bananas are 40 rupees per kg and apples are 60 rupees per kg. The papayas are very fresh here but I hadn't bought one yet, however, I had a pomegranate (20 rupees) and it was delicious.

Unfortunately I am not able to send pictures through in the mail as almost all the computers are infected with viruses and I do not want to lose my photos. I will definitely have a photo session when I come back.

We will be heading to Chandigarh tomorrow. It is still in the Punjab state and will take 5 hours to get there and we will be there for a couple nights. We will then head to Rishekesh on the 27th.

I will talk to you later!

I have completed my practicum!

The teaching experience at the Petoen Model School has been wonderful! I can't believe my teaching practicum is officially completed (November 20th). In these past 5 weeks at the school I have gained many different experiences from the Tibetan culture, the school community where most teachers and students live on campus. The children not only learn and play in this community but they treat each other like brothers and sisters. The teachers are not only educators but also play the parenting roles. The teachers' dormatories are always opened to the children and they share a large part of their non-teaching time with the children. This is certainly very different from the Canadian schools.

At Petoen School, students are taught only Tibetan from kindergarten to class 3. Students begin learning the English in class 4, Chinese (Mandarin) in class 6 and HIndi in class 7. Starting at class 6 level all subjects are taught in English but most subjects required Tibetan translation. The students loved singing so we did a lot of singing with them during lunch time. Unforturnately, the school does not encourage children to watch movies in English, they only watch movies in Tibetan language during free time.

The school curriculum is based on the India Education system and students are expected to write board exams that start in class 10. One large difference I noticed between the students in India and the students in the lower mainland is that in India students are required to memorize information rather than understand the concepts. Although the education director of the Tibetan schools has encourage teachers to teach for understanding, I have observed that many local teachers teach according to their textbooks. For many of the Canadian teachers we used teaching methods and strategies that require group work in which empower students to think and discuss ideas. This type of learning has been quite difficult for the Tibetan students. Initially, many of them were not able to think for themselves and struggled with the activities. This type of learning was definitely different for them but we pushed the students' boundaries and some of them began to contribute their ideas to class discussions.

Tibetan children are deeply engrained in their culture and the Buddhism religion. They are taught to pray and memorize scriptures everyday. They learn to sing and dance to traditional folk music. One interesting thing they learn at a young age is to perform Buhhdism debate. I watched young children as well as adult students in Sarah College (a Tibetan college for higher education) and found the process very fascinating. This type of philosophical debate is based on Buddhism but it trains the mind to think logically.

The school I am teaching at is the Petoen Model School which currently consists of Montessori preschool and classes 1 through 6. It has a total of 177 students with most of them being boarders. The school year is nearing its end and students and teachers go for a two month holiday starting from December 20th. The students will be picked up by their parents and will be headed back to their homes in other parts of Tibetan settlements spread throughout India.

After 6 weeks working with the students my practicum has come to an end. On the last day of school the SFU student teachers were surprised by traditional Tibetan singing and dancing that were performed by students. They were their traditional Tibetan costumes and were fabulous! The morning continued with our last visit with the students. During these few weeks, I have learned so much about the Tibetan culture from the students and developed relationship with many of them. Many of them wrote thank you notes to me and began to cry after giving me their notes. I was very touched by the messages and the kind wishes they wrote me. They asked for my home address and said that they will write me in the future. It was definitely a difficult departure for me as well as the children.

Now we have officially finished our semester we will be leaving Dharamsala on Monday, November 23 and will begin our tour of northwest India. We will be begin with the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. So I hope to write an update from other parts of India in the near future.

Enjoying life in Dharamsala

The SFU students had a few days off and went to Nadi village above the McLeod Gangi area (higher than upper Dharamsala). We attended The Dalai Lama's teaching. We sat with a large group of monks and nuns. His Holiness's teaching was taught in Tibetan language and we had no clue of his teaching initially until some monks shared their radios and headsets with English translation. His teaching was very good and I took some notes (though the translation was not very clear).

A few of us went hiking on last Saturday with Chok, our Tibetan language teacher and had a wonderful day! The hike was called the Triund Ridge and we left at 4:30am! We had to take a taxi ride up to meet Chok near a Hindu temple (Galu temple). Our taxi had trouble climbing the very rocky and steep hill so we had to get off it in order for him to get up. We started walking in pitch dark and an hour later we saw the beautiful crimpson sky at the start of the sunrise. The temperature was chilly as we were closed to 7000 feet in elevation. As the sun came up we passed by a large herd of sheep with many baby lambs...so cute! It took us only 2.5 hours to get to the ridge and we were at aw when we saw the mountains. Ten years ago the mountain tops had glacial ice but unfortunately, we saw clear evidence of global warming as the glacier had deminished to only a small patch. When we arrived at the ridge we saw tents, tea shops, people having breakfast and even a guest house. Of course we had to have tea and it was the best masala tea that I've had in India so far! We even practiced some yoga moves to stretch our muscles. The environment reminded me of Joffery Lakes near Pemberton. We spent 5 hours up there had a great time talking and learning from Chok. In the past, Chok was a monk for 10 years but had since disrobed after he went to France and experienced his first temptation. He shared some Buddhism philosophy and about Tibetan debating skills (really cool that all Buddhist monks learn how to debate to enhance logical thinking skills)! The diversity of insects and plants are very vast here in the subtropics. I saw some neat beetles, butterflies, praying mantis and a pack (correct term?) of baboons on the mountain...they can sure jump far from tree to tree!

Today is Monday and I started teaching my class 5 (grade 5) English and had a wonderful experience with them. I also had to work on my SFU mid term assignment afterschool in the school library and one boy from class 6 came and served me tea. The students want to learn songs from Canada so I taught them our national anthem. I plan to teach them "Wheels on the bus" tomorrow. Many of the children songs that I sung to my children are coming back to me...I sure missed my kids... The children at the school is very respectful and kind to me. It is very evident that they lack attention from their parents. Many of the children do have parents but are far away in other parts of India trying to make a living. Most of them make Tibetan sweaters to sell. The children only see them once a year for 2 months during Jan & Feb. I cannot imagine seeing my children for only two months each year.

There will be another professional development retreat in the coming weekend at Sarah College for Tibetan Higher Learning After the retreat all SFU students will be in full force teaching for the following 3 weeks. I am currently busy with preparing my unit and my lesson plans for teaching English class 5 and Science class 6. I am quite excited about my lessons. For English I will teach about global warming and some environmental issues relevant to India and in Dharamsala. For Science I will be teaching units related to ecology. My school associate Lobsang Loste is so nice that he lent me his labtop computer so I can work on my lessons at my temporary home. We will also be sharing our Halloween traditions with the Tibetan teachers at the retreat. All of the SFU student teachers will be dressed in costumes and will be carving a squash!

I am getting used to the routine and the food here. Again, very simple foods of curd with honey (very yummy yogurt), porridge (very good too) for breakfast. Lunch is provided at school (rice, dahl (lentil) and veggies) but is rather boring now that I have had 6 meals of the same food. Tonight I had veggie momos (dumplings)...I do miss meet though. The most expensive cost for me is the taxi fare. In order to save money and to get exercise I walk to and from school. I have lost a couple inches on my waist as all my pants from Canada are very loose now.

Dharamsala, India

We arrived in Dharamsala at 8:30pm after a 12.5 hour ride and we are happy to be here! The last 3 hours of the journey was up a winding hill and most of us got motion sickness (even though we all took Gravol)! We were so tired that dinner was definitely not appreciated. :-(

McLeod Gangi is located in the upper Dharamsala and is mostly a tourist area. The choices of cuisine is surprisingly high from Italian, Japanese, Korean, and even a Baskin Robin! Food is relatively cheap here. For a nice latte, it costs ~ 50 rupees which is over a $1 Cdn, a decent westernized dinner would cost less than 150 rupees, the cost to use computers at the internet cafe is 30 rupees per hour (75 cents Cdn) and to call home is 3 rupees per minute (~$5 per hour). We stayed in a fairly 'high class' hotel in McLeod Gangi (~800 to 1000 rupees a night!)

I did not sleep well at night due to the barking of many (I mean many) stray dogs!!! I decided to get up early at 7am and saw a beautiful view of the mountains and the surroundings from my balcony. Air is definitely fresher than Delhi. I put my running shoes on and went for a run down the winding hill (quite steep). I met many local people going for walks as well as many young school age children in uniforms. There were people preparing their donkeys to carry bricks and a Tibetan woman herding cows. Again, the roads are used by people, cars and animals. Cow poop is all over the roads and if you not careful with where you are going...you get the picture. :-) My return part of my run was definitely more intense and I certainly worked my cardiovascular system (yah...walked most of the way).

I went for a short hike to a beautiful waterfall. It is a common picnic place for the locals. One strange practice from the locals is that they want to post pictures with foreigners. One women basically handed us her baby and want us to have pictures with her whole family. They seemed to want to touch the skin and hair of caucasian people.


We visited the Tibetan government in exile and was quite impressed with how the government is ran...everything is transparent and corruption is not evident at all. The Tibetan people are extremely friendly and caring. It is very evident that Tibetans follow His Holiness the Dalai Lama's teaching. We actually got to visit the department of Education and the Director had a chance to explain their current education system. The objectives of education are to preserve their language and cultures and provide modern education so students can continue with post secondary education. They have performed collected data on the performance of their system and found some weaknesses and concerns. A couple of concerns include the literacy rate of English and Tibetan is still low after completion of 12th standard (British equivalent to grade 12) and that there is very little interest to continue post secondary eduation.

I was sick with food poisoning on Sunday night (yah, on Thanksgiving night) with vomitting and diarhrea. The stomach cramps came very quickly and I vomitted on my way home (had to ask the taxi driver to stop). I got back to the hotel but my bottom end couldn't hold it so I pooed my pants...:-( Luckily I return to my room, quickly washed up and curled up in bed. I had to one more light episode and slept the whole night and I was fine the next day...I really missed home when I was in pain...

We visited the different placement schools briefly on Monday and Tuesday (Oct. 12 & 13) and the schools were quite interesting. The schools are mostly boarding schools with some day scholars (students who do not board on campus). On Tuesday we checked out of the nice hotel in the tourists area of Dharamsala and were assigned to living quarters near our placement schools. The place we are living at is called Ghadong Monastery in which there are some guest rooms for family members. Our first night experience in our "guest house" was quite awful!!! The rooms were dusty and dirty with spiders crawling...one was a hugemungus 8cm diameter wolfe spider!!!! There were also other insects crawling out of the washroom sink! We were not comfoThe so we phone Mati and request to go back up to Him View (the nicer hotel) for one more night...she was not very happy with us and told us that "It's India!" The next day afterschool we went and bought a whole bunch of cleaning stuff to thoroughly clean the rooms. We even put moth balls all over the rooms. We then felt a lot better about staying there. I hung my Canada flag on the wall to make us feel home.

I am with 3 other students working in Peteon Model school. The school has about 140 students (consider small) and has implemented a more modern method of teaching (student centered instead of just teacher centered) . Students do not sit in rows but are put in a cluster and are encouraged to participate in class discussion and group work. We walk down the hill for about 25 minutes to go to the school and walk back uphill afterschool. I am definitely getting exercises everyday.The steepness of the school is like the Grouse Grind. The children really love me and are so eager to talk to me. They are extremely polite and invite me to sit down with them in the classroom. Students sit on the floor with cushions and they also set a place for me in the room. I am mostly observing this week and get to use some of the mandarin that I learned with my children's mandrin teacher. I will be teaching English, Science and maybe even Mandarin.

I usually have very simple breakfast in the morning. Today I had Chai (mild with tea), curd with honey (yougurt), and Tibetan bread with jam. It cost 30 rupees, about 70 cents. The porridge with museli is also very tasty and filling for breakfast. I get free lunch at the school which consists of mostly rice, dal (lentil soup), veggies and potatoes. For dinner I usually have chowmein or dumplings for dinner. On weekends I usually go back up to McLeod Gangi for some western foods.

I am definitely getting use to the place here and people are very friendly. The temperature at night is about 12C and during the day is about 26C. When standing in the sun the heat is quite intense!

The next few weeks will be very busy as our 'vacation' will be put on hold as our school work will be quite hectic!

I am in Delhi

Nameste,

We all made it to Delhi! It was a long 24 hour plane ride with transit
at Taipei. The meals on the plane were quite good but it was hard to
sleep.

It was definitely an experience at the airport as we had to haul 35
baggages in to 5 taxis...yah, stacked on the roof on the cars! The
roads in Delhi are crazy with 5-6 cars driving in a 3 lane street. They love to honk and beep. At the back of trucks it would have a sign to tell people to honk! After a few days I figured the meaning of honking...it's to let other cars know that they want to pass or that they are next to them. The roads would have cars, bicycles, auto rickshaws, people as well as cows or donkeys...real crazy but they seem to have a system that keep everyone in flow.

It is cloudy and muggy here and had drizzled a bit earlier but
there is a breeze. We are staying in an old Tibetan 'camp' that's converted to a small hotel near old Delhi. This is a
normal neighborhood with many people hanging around the back alley and
sell things. Some interesting things I saw so far are a family of 5
riding on a motor bike, young girls selling flowers and people selling magazines, or cut pieces of coconut at intersections.

We were all quite tired from the trip and kind of feeling the jet
lag... I am sharing my room with
Maggie and the air conditioner is not work in the room!!!! I was so
tired yesterday that I slept from 5pm til 3:30 am. I had a
bit of headache when I woke up but took an Avil and was fine. I could
not sleep once I woke up so I wrote in my journal.

Our second day was quite an interesting day in old Delhi. We went to
the Sikh temple in Delhi and wow, I couldn't believe the amount of people whom go
and worship. We had to wear scarves on our head before going in. We
walked in bare feet but the Sikhs actually drank the water where we walked
(I believe it's Holy water). All Sikh temples have a community kitchen with volunteers who prepare foods to feed over 1000 people a day.

We also visited a Jain temple and saw the temple with both European
and Muslim influences. Our guide, Naveena was fantastic! She is a
fourth generation female with a PhD. She shared with us that the swatiska is actually a symbol from the Jain religion in which a married woman would draw on the door of her parents to give health and prosperous blesssings to her own parents after visiting. Also, if the symbol goes clockwise it represents a male symbol and counter
clockwise represents females. Hitler actually used the female symbol
without realizing it...lol.

Crossing streets in Delhi can be very interesting. The streets were for pedestrians, cycle rickshaws, cars, auto rickshaws and all sorts of vehicles. We basically had to walk with the flow and any hesitations would have killed us but we survived! We watched the locals and the locals watched us...equal amount of curiosity on both sides.

Poverty is very real in India. There would be people
sleeping on streets everywhere and a whole family would sit near a
Muslim temple and the children would beg for money. Manual labour is
at its highest in Delhi. Women and children would be sorting rocks in
road constructions, men would be carrying huge load on their shoulder
or head and a couple of men would be pushing a bicycle with parcels
stacked 10 feet high.

We had a nice westernized breakfast this morning with eggs, toast,
coffee (very good black coffee) and milk tea. Things are relatively
inexpensive in India. Internet usage is 30 INR (Indian rupees) and
hour which is about 75 cents. Our lunch at a local cafeteria was $2
and the food was very good.