I got another piercing

My nose. It's a Nepali thing, almost every little girl or woman has one. Divya took me to get it done. $3 fools.





Sorry Dad.

Hello Miss!

I have been teaching young Tibetan monks English for over a week in a district called Bouddha. I was really nervous on my first day. To get there, I take an hour bus ride, then a 20-minute walk. By the time I get there I'm either sweating when the sun is out or wet from the rain. But the frustration is immediately gone when I see the young monks greeting me "Hello Miss!" The monks are extremely respectful, obedient, and shy.



I had a chance to meet the owner of the organization, Tashi. He called me the day he arrived in Kathmandu, we arranged a meeting to plan my opportunities on teaching 20 newly arrived young monks from India. So here's how it is; all of the new monks are Tibetan but live in India. There are 17 monks that live at the Lama Center permanently, from Nepal. I teach 37 young monks from age 5-18, and 5 older monks from age 19-30ish.

I met up with Tashi at the orphanage and we walk to the Lama Center, 12 minutes away. His English is very good and he seemed glad that I wanted to volunteer to teach his monks that are visiting for 6 weeks. We talk about America, Tibet, India, the monks, and my time table. We agreed on this respective schedule: come to the center 4 times a week, 4 classes a day, 45 minutes - 1 hour each class. Afterwards I ride back home to see my boys for Tiffon (tea & bread). I stay at the boy's house for a few hours and come back home to work on a photo project for the organization. The owner of Umbrella Foundation is leaving Nepal back to Ireland, so I am creating the photo album and getting all the children and volunteers involved. Basically I work 8:30 am-7:00 pm, 2 different locations, sometimes 3.

The monks are so cute! Sometimes you can't take it on how stupidly cute children are and you want to hug them, hold them, or pinch their cheeks. But with monks...they're not allowed to be touched by females. Okay that's fine, I gush and make funny faces at them to get a laugh.



Bad news on my third day of class, I found out that the secretary of the organization, Pachung, mother passed away. When there is no power, there will be no gas to cook. Pachung's mother used Petrol to light a fire and continue cooking. They decided to get a lot of Petrol just in case and put it in a bucket. There was an accident and an explosion occurred. Fire burned bottom half of her body, but then a random woman that was around the area grabbed the bucket of Petrol, when she thought it was WATER, poured it over her. Her body was completely burned and was taken to the hospital. Bad luck. Two days later she died. Hospitals in Nepal are not great and they think she would've been alive if she had proper care. Half of the monks are gone because they are mourning, praying, and chanting at Pachung's house. During lunch I spoke with one of the teachers. His name is Kunchok Mingyur, we were talking about death. He believes that if you do bad in your life, then you will go to hell, if you do good, you go to heaven. He isn't Christian, but this way of thinking is similar to Buddhism.

"Everyone dies at some point! This was her destiny, so sad...everyone was crying. I am not going to worry about death because I have done good in my life, I am not afraid to die," He says.

"Me too." I responded.