Teaching English In Tibet

While in Lhasa, my Tibetan guide Gaden asked if I would mind going to a local English-language school where his friend teaches some classes. He told me that it would be great for the kids to be able to have conversation with a native (American) English speaker. SURE!!! I'd LOVE to do it!

Our driver dropped us off in front of the school, which has several multiple-floor buildings. While walking through the courtyard we could hear people yelling "hello" and other greetings out the windows. What? Huh? What's going on? I started to get a little nervous at that point but I still answered each and every greeting with one of my own.

The classroom that I was led to was on the second floor and there were eight students, four guys and four girls, who all looked to be in their late teens. Here's my first English class:

We spent about an hour or so having "question-and-answer" time as well as "conversation" time. They asked me for my feelings about the U.S., Spain, and Tibet and about some of my travels. I was asked to give my opinions on how people from the U.S. are similar and different from people in Tibet. Some of their questions were pretty deep like when one student wanted to know if people in the U.S. believe in karma.

They also asked me for advice on how to learn English. I told them about my experience learning Spanish and that the "trick" for me was to just let go, not to worry about if it's right or not, and just talk. Over time, you'll improve by listening to people correcting you. You'll have to ask my Spanish-speaking friends if my method has been effective...

I had the chance to ask them a bunch of questions too. I asked each student what their goals were and what they wanted to do once they've finished school. Interestingly enough, the top two answers were to be an English teacher and to be a tour guide. I actually like both of those answers and will consider them as career options too. :-)

After "class" we left the building and hung out in the courtyard for a while. A bunch of students came up and were talking with me. It was a lot of fun for me and I hope valuable for them.

What a great experience. Over the past year I've thought about different career options including teaching English somewhere in the (non-English speaking) world. I'm currently looking into a couple of different options and, after this, I think teaching English might be fun and rewarding. I guess we'll see where the wheel stops spinning.

Sera And Deprung Monasteries

The Sera Monastery is located just outside of Lhasa. This college is famous as a place to watch the "monk debates", which, for the monks, is a fundamental part of the process of learning Buddhism. The debates are held in an open courtyard where visitors can stand along the sides to watch.

Sets of two monks, with one being the questioner and the other being the defender, debate a variety of topics. There are many rules and traditions that are observed during this process including gesturing, clapping, tones, wording, and a bunch of other stuff that I'm sure that I didn't even notice. During the day of my visit I'd guess that there were about 100 monks in the courtyard.

Nearby Lhasa is another college monastery called the Deprung. Here I got to observe a couple of cool traditions. The first was a gathering of a large number of monks in a central prayer hall. It was a very interesting to see so many monks in one place.

After leaving the prayer hall, our guide took us over to another area of the monastery where repairs were being made to a roof on one building. In the courtyard in front of the building, workers were preparing a fine, reinforced crushed-stone mixture to be used up above.

About 100 young volunteers were up on the roof doing a call-and-response-style of singing (girls in one group and guys in another) and tamping down the roofing mix with weights on posts. I could tell that they were having lots of fun and you could see that it was an honor to work on the monastery.

I went up on the roof and helped (believe it or not) for about five minutes. Here's a quick video I took of the repair process:

It was an honor and quite an experience for me to be able to watch and participate in the repair of the monastery, which I know will be around for hundreds if not a thousand years.

Potala Palace

On a large hill just west of the center of Lhasa is the Potala Palace. My guess is that this amazingly beautiful building is the most photographed item in all of Tibet.

Built in 1645, it served as the home of the Dalai Lama until the 1959 Tibetan uprising when he fled to India. To visit the Potala Palace, it is necessary to make a reservation at least a day prior and to arrive at the front gate around your appointed time. From there you walk up the front stairs to reach the building. Since the palace is at 12,100 feet (3,700m) above sea level you...feel...every...single...one...of...them. What must Everest, at twice the height, be like?

One of the first areas you come to during the tour is the White Palace, which serves as the residence of the Dalai Lama. I wanted to go take a quick nap there but was told that we were limited to only one hour for the entire visit and that we needed to move on.

The parts of the Potala Palace that aren't living quarters are dedicated to things like meeting areas, offices, chapels, shrines, study areas, and so on. You can't take pictures inside most of the palace so my photos are all from the outside. As you can see, the structure is impressive. The contrast between the dark red areas and the white areas is striking. The palace also has some gold-colored buildings spread throughout (you can see a hint of one in the photo above). The white areas are painted with a lime-based mixture that builds up over time. If you look closely at the photo below, the walls look like there are stalactites growing on them.

You know when you see travel photos that there are always these brightly-colored spots that look too nice to be real? I have a bunch of photos like that from my visit to Guatemala a few years ago and, well, here's one from Tibet (yes, it's real):

The tour of Portala lasts just over an hour or so. It's an inspiring building in an inspiring place and definitely worth the trip. At night they have the palace lit up and I took a bunch of photos from the plaza across the street. I think that this was the best one I got.

Jokhang Temple And Barkhor Market

As I wrote about in my last post, the city of Lhasa in Tibet has many important Buddhist sites and lots of pilgrims (and an occasional western tourist) to visit them. The most sacred is the Jokhang Temple, which is located in the center of the city and is surrounded by the Barkhor square and market. In this photo you can see pilgrims prostrating themselves in front of the Jokhang:

The Jokhang was originally built in approximately 642 A.D. and houses many statues and other works of art/worship in its three floors of chapels. When pilgrims arrive at the temple, a common practice is to circumambulate the entire complex. Circumambulation is a devotional process practiced by many faiths of moving around a sacred object or place. Priests do it around the alter during a Catholic mass and you may have seen video of Muslim pilgrims circling the cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca (no, I haven't been there - yet...). Once they have completed their walk around the temple, the pilgrims enter the building carrying offerings of money and yak butter. This is the front door of the Jokhang where the pilgrims are lined up to enter:

Wait. Did I mention yak butter again? Yes I did. It's everywhere in Lhasa. The pilgrims bring it in large containers and pour it into the yak butter lamps that are spread throughout all the temples. It gets on pretty much everything and the monks have a part-time job of constantly removing excess from the lamps. Actually, I'm not a big fan of the smell of burning yak butter but if I smelled it again one day I'm sure that it would instantly take me back mentally to Lhasa.

The architecture in Tibet is beautiful. My photos can't even get close to showing how breath taking it is. At most of the sites you're able to take photos inside and are even able to go onto the roof and take photos too. This is from one of the patios on the roof of the Jokhang:

...and another with a few random people in it:

Located just in front of the Jokhang Temple is the Barkhor square and market. I can imagine that it gets much more crowded during the summer months but here's what it looks like in early-to-mid November (you can see Potala Palace on the hill towards the top):

The Barkhor and market is a great place to wander around. It was super interesting to see all the (non-western) tourist items for sale at the stalls and to eat some of the local snacks. These are prayer wheels that are carried and spun by pilgrims:

I've had the chance to know a couple of Buddhists during my lifetime but I have such a better understanding and respect now that I've been to Tibet. It's an honor to be able to visit these sites while on my journey circumnavigating the globe.

Tibet

The roof of the world. Here's the view on the way:

You really need to want to go to Tibet to actually get there. Physically? Other side of the world. Visas? In addition to the standard visa to go to China, you also have to get a special Tibetan travel permit, which you can only get through an authorized travel agency in China. In other words, it takes a lot of extra steps to get there relative to other places you can visit.

The most common tour package is a four-day visit to Lhasa, a city of approximately 250,000 located in valley at 12,000 feet high in the Himalayas. (You can also go to Everest Base Camp but the whole trip takes about five days due to the super-high altitudes and the time needed to adjust.) It's home to several important religious sites and is visited by many Tibetan Buddhists as part of a pilgrimage. It was the first place that I've been to in my life that really had its main focus on tourists other than western ones. The markets surrounding the main areas of town had everything you might need for your pilgrimage including clothing, footwear, prayer accessories, food, and...yak butter. Here are some tourists in the market:

While in town on your pilgrimage, it's a great opportunity to visit a doctor and/or dentist. I was seriously considering getting a grill at this place:

There are pilgrims everywhere, lots of them. A common practice is to do multiple walking "laps" (known as "devotional circumambulations") in the Barkhor Market surrounding the Jokhang Temple (which I'll write about later):

This is a shot with some of the locals during my (one) lap of the temple:

Lhasa is a very interesting city to visit. It definitely has a different feel from the other places I went to in China; almost like another country... Because of its high elevation, it feels desert-like and there are very few plants and only a small number of (green-house) farms outside of town. Yes, there are yaks too, which is an important source of meat and yak butter (yes-more on that later). This is shot taken outside of town of some of the other locals:

Tibet, and Lhasa in particular, is an amazing destination. You're on the top of the world, there are lots of sites to see, and the people watching is captivating. It also has the honor of being so high that it was the first time where my toiletries in my luggage leaked after a couple of days, not just while they were on the plane.