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!