Between Monks and Monkeys

I'm sitting in Cafe 1 2 in McLo drinking lemon ginger honey and feeling very happy to be back. The old place is pretty much the same as last time except quite a lot colder - the mountains are covered in snow (beautiful) and there is a real chill in the air when you are out of the sun. Yesterday I bought a lovely soft warm yak wool jacket and I think it's going to get a lot of use in the next few weeks until things warm up.

Jocelyn and I came up here by the Volvo bus - having used the cheap bus last time I had to make the comparison. Well, you get more leg room and a foot rest, which is nice, so it was worth the extra 300 rupees. Our driver was a little reckless at times and also had a multi-noise horn which he had a lovely time trying out frequently in the first two or three hours of the trip - luckily he calmed down somewhat before we wanted to sleep.

Once we'd settled in to our accommodation in Snow Height (where I'm not in the room I wanted, but the one I have is OK) we came up here to Cafe 1 2 for breakfast and I was delighted to run into my star student from 2010, Jampa. And today I found that I'm going to be teaching him, as I'm taking the upper intermediate class. (I also have my worst student from 2010, so that balances things out..) Tomorrow we have the opening ceremony for the school, and on Friday we start teaching. I'll also enrol for the basic speaking class in the morning at the Tibet Library, so life will be busy.

Jocelyn had been in touch with LHA, one of the other volunteer organisations, but when she got here they said they didn't need any more teachers, which was pretty slack. However she is going to take a conversation class and a study group at Tibet Charity, and do relieving if necessary, so it's all worked out well. The other teachers are a guy from the USA, three women from Aussie, a young woman from the Chech Republic, and we are expecting another teacher on Monday. So we have plenty of teachers - more than last time I was here.

Language gaff of the week - we were sitting on the metro in Delhi and Jocelyn decided to be friendly with the smiling woman sitting next to her. With a big grin she fanned herself and said "Marsala!" (Exceot that marsala means spice..and she'd meant "Garam" - hot.) Naturally she got a very puzzled look and the woman edged away a little. It was sort of how you might react if a foreigner turned to you and said brightly "Tadpole!" or something... Anyway it had us in stitches all the way to our stop.