Playing, Singing, Teaching and Learning: An Update from the Village

Internet has barely been working here for the past few days so excuse late replies etc. via email, etc.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to be free”

It is a Katannu (gratitude…once again missing the tildes over the n’s) day

So I have been spending a notable amount of time with a special someone.  I didn’t mention anything earlier for various reasons...partly because she ran out of the room any time I came into it for the first couple weeks.  But she started to warm up to me a little while ago and so we have become closer in the recent days and weeks.  This morning, while she was nuzzled in between my arm and torso, head on my chest, she looked deep into my eyes, still making a sound like a tiny motor boat, and I felt quite at ease.  She is a little underdeveloped from surviving almost exclusively on left over rice (which might explain why she is so whiny as well), but she has a lovely grey coat and is quite energetic none the less.  She is missing part of her left ear but doesn’t seem to be self-conscious of that fact, and I try not to draw too much attention to it…or to the fact that she is only about eighteen inches long from the tip of the tail to the end of her little pink nose that she rubs up against mine when she wants to make me feel special.  Her name is Puss-puss and she is the little two year old cat of the Pakhrin household.  Haha…Gotcha (at least for a minute there).  But she is very sweet and, though Michelle and Geoff told me she freaks out at every movement, which was true for the first couple weeks of my time here, she seems to have taken a liking to me and we have been hanging out together.

So…there I am grading tests for my ESL classes, drinking tea in a turtle neck, mumbling incoherent things to myself and laughing quietly at some of the answers when I go, “Holy shit…I’ve become my father.” Haha, no, but seriously, I have had some flashes of my old teachers from school, notably from elementary school (probably due to the age of the student I am teaching now).  When I was younger, there was such a tendency to regard teachers as super-human machinery, beyond the pettiness of human existence, sans social lives outside of school…they were Mr. or Mrs. So and So and they taught us stuff and gave us homework and that was the whole picture…it didn’t occur to me till later that they were just like everyone else...that when they walked into the classroom they had their baggage with them, they had thoughts of love and loss, past and future, longing and doubt, that they had dreams of their own...that they, in addition to the answers they were always able to provide like some great gods of knowledge, had their problems too…maybe they also wanted to be something when they grew up. 

My classes are going pretty well for the most part.  As you can see, class three and I have gotten to verse two of “Blackbird.”  Class four and I are done with the first verse of our original song about the school…it goes a little something like this:

We all love our school Laligurash (Laligurash means “Rhododendron” in Nepali)

It sits beautifully on the hillside

We all love our school Laligurash

We will carry our knowledge far and wide

I’ve tried out some new things that Jack and I talked about the other day—they have been pretty helpful thus far…dialogues and things of that nature, making the kids come up to the front a little more often…its tough sometimes to know when to stop pushing them though.  Sometimes they just need to sit there for a sec and then they spit it out, and from then on they have a little more confidence…other times they just shut down and you’ve got to know when to say, “It’s ok, you can sit down…does anyone else know the answer?”  I have also been a little busier since I had picked up another class for that past couple days…though I think that’s over with for now.  (Right now, Shushmi is singing “Blackbird” behind me with her little accent, squeaking along…its pretty cute.  Waking up to the sound of her laughter through the ceiling in the freezing morning is one of the things I missed most while in Kathmandu…it’s the kind of laugh that makes you happy there are children in the world.  She’s always giggling about and it never gets old.  She does her homework, she laughs, Nikesh hits her, she laughs, her uncle yells at her to do this or that, she laughs, she wakes up, she laughs, she goes to sleep she laughs.)  I also have to figure out just how far to go with teaching them about words and etymologies and such.  I mean, they’re already learning their third language…trying to explain to them that “photograph” comes from the two ancient Greek words for “light” and “writing,” (which also led into a discussion as to why those two words are used, since I realized afterward that they have no knowledge of the way in which old-timey cameras operated), or telling them the Latin root of “dictionary”…I mean, it would be helpful in encountering related words, etc, but its just too much for them most of the time.  They do seem to be interested in other alphabets…I’ve put Devanagari (which is mostly for their entertainment at watching me misspell words), Tibetan (since we were doing names in other languages that day), Hebrew (so that they had an example of writing that moved from right to left) and Greek (in our discussions on the roots of English words, etc.) on the board so far and they look at most of them like, “Whuu?” but they seem pretty curious about anything outside Nepal since almost none of them have been anywhere else...I’m pretty sure 95% of them haven’t even been to Kathmandu.  I mean the road only got here three years ago haha. 

Nikesh and I seem to have moved on from guitar lessons to ping pong lessons.  This is not to say that he is not playing guitar anymore…he asks for it constantly…but at this point he is less interested in learning chords and more just in strumming away on open strings with his other hand just pressing on random strings on random frets, alternating between moving toward and away from the bridge for a while and singing the lyrics to “Wonderwall” over the sound (and because Nikesh sings it so often, and asks me to sing it so often, and because Shushmita comes and hangs out in my room whenever he’s there, she too has started singing along…it’s a great little chorus we’ve going).  I think that his lack of desire to learn proper guitar chords is due to, among other things, 1) the fact that he is left handed, and so in order to strum away like a rock star (which is what he really likes to do) he plays the guitar backwards thereby making it even more difficult to apply what he has learned, and 2) the fact that I mess with the tuning pretty regularly (and I don’t switch it back every time he wants to play since that would wreck the strings pretty quickly), and so, even if he were to play it in a right handed fashion, it would be a different set of chords he’d have to learn from one tuning to the next and that’s a pain…plus when you play open strings with an open tuning it sounds pretty good so he was happy enough with that.   So now we play ping pong (made a little more interesting than your average game by the fact that we play on planks of warped wood) on a daily basis.  He is a worthy opponent.  Shushmi joins in when Nikesh will let her…but she’s so little, the concept of forehand and backhand are almost irrelevant…just having her hit the ball back over the net (if she can reach it) is the priority. The three of us have had some ok times together…I taught them to make friendship bracelets a while back and Nikesh mastered that pretty quickly.  I made one for Shushmi that night, but since I suck at tying it off (thank you Boy Scouts), she ended up carrying it around in her pocket for a bit.  I bought them a few movies: Finding Nemo, Despicable Me, and How to Train Your Dragon (which I hadn’t seen until a friend and I bought it one night in Kathmandu and watched it in the restaurant on the TV upstairs while we had dinner…awesome movie), when I was in Kathmandu, and they tried to burn through all three of them in one night…but they were thwarted…so it took them a whole 48 hours.

Almost immediately after I put up my last entry, I got an email from the monk that I met in Lumbini letting me know that he is back in Sri Lanka and that I should give him a call. I have decided that it would be (irresponsible would be the wrong word...foolish perhaps?)…that I would be remiss not to do another retreat while I am here on this trip and so I have been checking schedules for Bodh Gaya and Dharamsala…it is hard for me not to consider the invitation to Sri Lanka to practice and study as well…I don’t know, we’ll see I suppose.  It’s pretty strange to me to be looking into the last leg of this India/Nepal section of the trip, not to mention tickets back to the U.S…its not like I’m sad about it per se, and its not like the first four months just “flew by” me…I have been present for a good deal of it and can recognize how much has happened, how much time-space remains for things to continue happening…but it’s just that when you look forward to something for so long, when you imagine it to be this way and that, whether or not you try to, its difficult in some ways, interesting in others, to watch the future become the present become the past…to watch it move, shift, transform, to do what it is in the nature of all conditioned things to do…to change…but there is a beauty to it as well…and a joy.  “It is what it is” as they say...that and sometimes more.

Other bits of my life here are a spiked volleyball that I took to the forehead yesterday, one of the Bhutanese refugee teachers (also the one who spiked me in the head haha) leaving to begin the process of being placed in the US with some of his family, Surendra’s mother offering me a curry that had so much salt in it that it felt like my mouth was burning (I didn’t even know that salt could do that)…but then she gave us fresh honey still in the comb…which was cool until the sugar high came along, and the fact that I’m on my seventh (a bad bootleg copy with typos of The Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking) and eighth (The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick…and what a mind trip that has been so far) books in five or so weeks (which is a lot if you know me…at least it was at one point…my ability to engage in some activities requiring a prolonged focus improved drastically when I started doing Vipassana seriously…though some abilities are certainly still lacking…in time I hope…or as an old friend and teacher used to say... “I’m leaving space for it.”)

Alright, bed time.  Be good…and be warm.  The lows are just above freezing here.  Sending Metta out (but honestly, as of late, due to difficulties with health, weak samadhi and a few personal bits [one specifically], I have deemed this a time for concentrating the light and power of Metta inwards more than outwards to build up some strength, self-forgiveness and perspective…but as soon as I got some to spare its headed your way haha).

And now its a Panna day (tildes)

Lumbini: A Place of Peace

It is a Sila day…I used to build pillow forts with my best friend when I was little.  We would gather every pillow in the house, dismantle the couches (which I think our parents were none too happy about)…and then we’d run to the other’s house, since it was only 5 houses down, and bring in those resources as well, to create an indestructible (and quite comfy) fortress of down and cotton and thread and different printed fabrics…and there we would hide away…eating veggies or PB n J or whatever one of our mothers or babysitters brought around…reading scary stories with a flashlight.  There was a feeling of safety, being surrounded and away from worldly affairs, from the illusions masquerading as reality, which, even from the single digits, relentlessly condition our minds and fill our daily lives…there was a feeling of peace, a kind of freedom. 

I mention this memory because it was long buried until I stood in the peace park of the Maya Devi Temple in Lumbini, Nepal, where the Buddha was born, and I felt embraced, enveloped, swaddle by the hundreds of strings of prayer flags (“wind horse” translated literally from the Tibetan)…thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of white, red, green, yellow and blue sheets of cloth, and the wind blowing mantras of peace, compassion and liberation in all directions...tied from Bodhi Tree to bodhi tree to palm to lamp post to sapling and back to Bodhi Tree.  In the early morning, they sail in serenity and make a subtle sound that one has to listen to hear...sometimes in the afternoon they clap with the swift southern wind.  Sometimes the park is almost empty, sometimes monks from different orders are leading chants and meditation, sometimes there are groups of students on field trips, sometimes there are 30 monkeys jumping and hanging all over the flags in the south-east corner of the park…but no matter who is here, time on the grass in the park beneath the colorful cloth is always a special experience…

I wrote most of the above just before a long sit opposite the temple in the park.  I had finally given up after numerous days of trying to make something happen, to, though not consciously, have a sit worthy of the place in which I was sitting (whatever that means)…trying, unsuccessfully, to superimpose some complicated notions onto the flawless simplicity of the present moment, trying to correct that which needs no correction.  I believe it was on my last afternoon in Lumbini that I finally let go enough to just sit and breathe and feel and be.  When I opened my eyes after the hour plus session and looked around, I saw, about 10 yards to the right and 25 to the left of the little grass bump I was on, two different groups of sitters in monastic robes that had not been there when I first closed my eyes.  To my right were about 50 of the “novitiates” from the Aloka Foundation that I had spent time with in Kusinara accompanied by their teacher (with whom I had a few words before leaving the park…I mention it because he invited me to come to the dharma talk he was giving later that evening in the Korean Monastery, which I attended), and to my left was a group of, what looked from a distance to be, 15 or so Thai monks and as many all-in-white pilgrims.  I couldn’t help thinking that we had all combined efforts or at least picked up on each others vibrations that afternoon…I had felt supported…or maybe assisted is a better word during sections of my sit…its nice when you can sit with a few thousand years of combined meditative experience, especially when it is being amplified by a place that has absorbed and radiates the spirit of total awakening.

The Lumbini Peace Park is a ten square km rectangle on about a 1:4 ratio filled with trees, temples and pagodas.  The middle couple kilometers of the park is divided long-ways by a manmade creek (currently running dry due to construction) carved down the center, separating the park into two districts:West (where the Therevada temples of Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma, Mahabodhi Society, Gautami Nunnery, etc. are built) and East (the Mahayana/Vajrayana district which holds the temples Japan, China, Korea, Austria, Germany, Nepal, Vietnam, and on and on).  Countries from around the world build temples in this community as a sign of solidarity and peace. The circular southern section of the park holds the above mentioned Maya Devi Temple and is surrounded by a manmade body of water, while the northern end is home to the massive Japanese Stupa for World Peace (where I spent a good chunk of time one afternoon). Between these two, at the southern end of the now empty creek, is a modest flame of peace, burning day and night.  I stayed my first two or three nights at the Mahabodhi Society of India, which is where I met a very wise and kind Sri Lankan monk whose name means “Victory of the Generations.” 

I had been studying some Pali chants when the power went out in Lumbini (as it did for a couple of hours every night), and so I decided to continue my studies by candlelight in the common area.  After an hour or so I had amassed many a question when by walks a middle aged, bald, dark skinned man in saffron robes…how convenient.  I asked him if I could borrow him for a few questions and he acquiesced, I think it was just out of curiosity initially.  We started with some clarifications of vocabulary and translations (the differences between sukkha and somanassa, dukkha and domanassa among other things) and gradually made our way to the philosophical end of the spectrum (Four Noble Truths, causality, the three marks of existence, etc.).  I hadn’t planned on keeping him long but we both seemed to be enjoying each other’s company and I was happy to have the resource as the breadth of his knowledge became more apparent…and I thought we did a fairly good job bridging the language barrier of Sinhalese to English with some Pali/Sanskrit fillers.  He invited me to come back (I was moving to the Gautami Nunnery down the way the following afternoon, which is where I slept until my departure from Lumbini) the next night to continue the discussion.  I returned the following evening and we talked by a single candle’s light, each sitting on one of the ten vacant beds in the room, unable to clearly see each other’s faces from a few feet away, shifting our postures as needed…we spent a good deal of time/until the assistant head monk in charge broke it up discussing the Twelve Steps of Dependent Origination (a subject that has always been a little alien and difficult for me) in terms of the transition/birth, death and rebirth that we all undergo from moment to moment rather than from lifetime to lifetime (an interpretation revolving around reincarnation would have been a “literal” read of the text). Avijja paccaya sankhara (Ignorance conditions mental fabrications [mental fabrications arise dependent on the condition of ignorance]), sankhara paccaya vinyanam (mental fabrications condition consciousness), vinyana paccaya namarupam (consciousness conditions the mind-matter process)…is all we were able to get through that night.  He told me that some of the questions I asked were questions that, according to the Pali cannon, were put to the Buddha in his lifetime.  He told me how the Buddha addressed the issues and then told me what he himself had been taught and thought about the various topics himself.  In the time we spent together that night, he also told me about his monastery in a small Sri Lankan town (in which he is the only monk), invited me to come and meditate there under his guidance, and gave me his information.  (It is something I am considering working into the time I have left but I think it would stretch both time and money at this point…perhaps for the next trip.)

Because we only got through the first four steps of the chain, he invited me to come back the following morning to continue…and so it continued at eight the following morning, in the Mahabodhi Society courtyard, under the gaze of many visiting children, passersby and fellow monks (including the assistant monk in charge).  We finished the chain that morning: namarupam paccaya salayatanam (the mind-matter process conditions the six sense gates), salayata paccaya phasso (the six sense gates condition sense impressions), phassa paccaya vedana (sense impressions condition sensation/feeling), vedana paccaya tanha (feelings condition craving), tanha paccaya upadanam (craving conditions clinging), upadana paccaya bhavo (clinging conditions becoming), bhava paccaya jati (becoming conditions birth), jati paccaya jaramanam, soka, paridevadukkha, domanassupayasa sambhavanti (birth conditions old age, death, grief, lamentation, pain, depression and despair)…Evametassa kevalassa dukkhakkhandassa samudayo hoti (Thus the entire mass of suffering arises).  He gave me a related analytical practice (though I have had little success with it due to some specific troubles with application) and we had time to discuss a few other aspects of the nature of mind, etc.  It was all a pretty awesome experience from which I learned a good deal. I have so many more questions, but I know that all the thinking and intellectual curiosity in the world isn’t going to help me to implement what I’ve learned so that I can make positive changes within myself, nor will it reveal the subtler reality behind the words…these truths are in the realm of practice, not theory.

The road trip from Kusinagar to Gorakhpur, Gorakhpur to the Sonauli border crossing (specifically this section), the border to Lumbini, was an adventure and a rather severe experience that left me reeling for a couple days after I arrived in Lumbini (I am still feeling the effects to some extent now).  I awoke that first morning in the Mahabodhi Society to some tears and the familiar weight of depression and the shame of inaction…it took me quite a while to move myself up and out of bed. I’m not going to get into it all now but you can ask me about the drive to the border at some later date.  When my hunger finally raised me up and out of bed, I worked my way toward the entrance (though at that point I didn’t really have any idea where the entrance was since I had arrived late the night before in the dark) and ended up meeting a nice Israeli couple with whom I spent the morning walking around the park and seeing the various temples.  They were coming from Kathmandu on their way to India and since I was doing the opposite, we decided to trade stories and information and get some lunch together.  We traded info and Lior, the male, invited me to come and visit and spend some time on his Kibutz since I showed interest.  Hearing them talk about trekking in Nepal really made me consider working it into my time here but once again, time and money…and its pretty cold up there in February…we’ll see if an opportunity presents itself. 

Before this goes on too much longer…other notable experiences were wandering about the elaborate German temple with all its cool murals and little displays of the Buddha’s life on the grass in the courtyard; going to (what I believe was) a consecration ceremony at the Austrian temple at which I watched some type of oraculation, had my first Tibetan butter tea (you know when you used to make kraft macaroni and cheese and there was extra milk mixed with that fake powder cheese stuff at the bottom…that’s what it tasted like…yes, I finished it, all by myself); visiting the Korean temple with its intricate and beautifully carved podium (on which the Bhante of the Aloka Foundation sat when he gave his dharma talk on my last evening in Lumbini); the time I spent at the Japanese Peace stupa with my cycle rickshaw driver at the northern end of the park; seeing the ceremonial pool adjacent the Maya Devi Temple lit brightly in the dark night by a thousand candles; a pleasant exchange with an elderly Burmese monk inside the temple, next to the stone which is supposed to mark the spot where the Buddha was born…and all the other little bits and pieces that made my time there so special that there are no words for. 

Present time from Mirge: The kids’ exams are over today…and thank goodness for that.  If I never have to be a testmaster again it’ll be soon enough… “eyes on your own paper” “stop talking” “turn around” and all that other fascist nonsense…I’ve had enough of it.  I’m gonna go talk to Jack some more this afternoon and try and finish laundry since I am running out of clothes, maybe watch part of a movie if I can get to it before the kids finish. I am feeling a little better and hope you are all healthy and warm.  I think talking about where I was at with my practice and health, writing about Lumbini and working on the Kathmandu entry helped me gain some perspective and transfer some energy into samma vayamo (right effort).  Since I feel that I have moved past (or don’t feel so lost in) some of the anger/negativity from recent days and weeks, I was considering scrapping the next entry…but it occurred to me that, not only is coming face to face with unpleasantness inside oneself an inescapable part of the path, but also that the way I respond to and work through great blockages and obstacles like the negativity I have been experiencing recently is at least as important as the way I work in more congenial circumstances.  It is so easy to pay lip service to positive change within oneself and the world (which is what I have been doing most of my life), but to actually engage the world, to investigate one’s own mind…I ask for humility, patience, tolerance and a clear view of the nature of reality…and they don’t come in a box with a ribbon…they come by the peeling off of old layers of conditioning, by the carving out of deep rooted afflictions and ignorance…it is not a pleasant process at times…but there is nothing I have found to be more worthy of my attention and lifeblood.  Be good and be well.  And of course…a haiku for the road…

Lonely, not alone

A small shift in the mind’s eye

Alone, not lonely

Interlude: Allergies, A New Friend, and Fundraising

I am working on entries from Lumbini and this last week in Kathmandu…it is proving to be difficult work for various reasons, among them are that the two entries could hardly be more different from each other, my allergies are getting the better of me, and I have had a fear of shifting the tone of my writing to the degree as would match the succession of mind states experienced during the days on either side of New Year’s (I think that this last reason is simultaneously the weakest and strongest of the many…but having realized recently that it is the result of nothing more than attachment, I am getting over it).  I have felt divorced from my spiritual journey as of late, which is probably just another way of saying that I have hit an obstacle on the path…usually a meaningful event, but it is once again proving difficult to appreciate the beauty of the storm while riding in it.  I am glad to be back in the bosom of the gentle terraced hillscape of the farms of the Dolokha region and am recovering from the thick, grey, polluted atmosphere of Nepal’s capital city (within two hours of my arrival in Kathmandu I was blowing black out of my nose and within two days I was hacking the hack of a recently-off-the-wagon smoker). 

While I am glad to be back, I have clearly been dealing with some allergies since my return, which have had a significant impact (different from but equivalent to, in terms of severity, the effects of being suffocated by the smog in Kathmandu) on my general demeanor.  It took me a while to put all the little signs (the dry throat, the almost constant desire to be eating something even if I’m not hungry, headache, zero to irritable in about two seconds, an aversion to my sitting practice, subtle ever-present anxiety, lack of motivation due to lack of focus, tired eyes by noon…and on and on) together since they haven’t been as overpowering as California in springtime, but now I see what’s up and it makes a little more sense…but it still doesn’t go away.  (Haha, I remember when I was younger seeing all the commercials for allergy meds, and when my friends would complain and I’d think to myself, “It’s a runny nose…its not that big a deal, get over it.”  I don’t know if it’s karmic fruition or what, but I guess I was asking for it.)  All that plus the stomach trouble I have been dealing with since Sarnath has made for an obnoxious state of affairs at times.  When I sit with allergies, which is arguably when I most need to do it, its like being Toph, the earth bender, in the sands of the desert (if that’s a reference you don’t get don’t worry about it).  All around me is a disorienting and opaque body sensation that I have to dig beneath in order to do what I feel is “real work.”  Stringing more than two or three breaths together has been a major feat lately.  It is fascinating in that I can see the subtle confusion in body, which conditions the lack of focus in the mind, which in turn conditions the endless “rolling in thoughts,” emotional instability and general negativity, which then condition actions of body and speech in the world, but then there is a great deal of frustration that quickly follows due to seeing the pattern of events yet feeling powerless to actually do much about it.  I don’t remember the name of the Greek heroine doomed for all eternity to know the future but never be believed and so she must watch helplessly as it all unfolds before her (pretty sure there is even a complex named after her)…that’s a little bit of what I feel like when I try to develop Metta, patience, compassion, samadhi, whatever it is in that moment, and then, seemingly out of my control, a scowl spreads across my face and indifferent or intolerant words come out of my mouth--my efforts vanishing in an instant, my body (and in some ways my mind) wont do what my awareness tells it to...which I suppose just means I have to strengthen awareness. I have had flashbacks to a thousand times in my life when I have silently cried out for someone to know “what I really mean” beneath the surface but couldn’t get it out in time to beat out the conditioned response, my standard verbal or physical reaction of pride or anger or arrogance…whether it was because of adolescent hormone spikes or a sugar high or adhd or drugs or deeply grooved neuron channels or something more subtle…I feel like I have been locked inside myself for a good portion of my life…like a desperately wailing infant, whose desires are a mystery to the outside world…and the vicious cycle continues when I avoid sitting, one of the only activities that helps, due to its difficulty.  I have infinitely more trouble driving a wedge of equanimity between internal and external events when I am afflicted by allergies.  At times, I have also noticed an increase in selfishness and impulsiveness due to the aforementioned feeling of being locked in my body and thoughts, and a decrease in discipline and restraint due to fuzzy concentration and what I believe is actually a mild shift in sensory perception…but that aspect is too subtle for me to try and fit into a few short explanatory sentences.  One will probably be able to get the gist of what I’m talking about from some of the segments in the Kathmandu entry, though I am not sure what form they will take. 

Anyways, I chose to bypass those two entries for the time being because today I met with an Australian high school teacher/counselor named Jack, who has been assisting (financially and in other ways) the Dolokha region, specifically Mirge, and specifically in terms of education, since the 90’s.  While we were talking, I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was meeting someone that would change the course of my life more noticeably than the average passerby.  (It could be that because of that feeling I will make more of an effort and therefore will assist my little prophecy to its fruition.  It could be that I picked up on something beyond my particular brand of planning and the feeling a little gift for being mindful.  It could be that we met and that is the end of it.  We shall see.)  He told me about the work he has been doing here over the past 14 years and asked about my time here so far. We talked about what kind of organizations and resources there are in Nepal and internationally to help areas like this one develop.  We talked about what changes we thought were needed in terms of teacher training and distribution of resources. We discussed some of the more pronounced cultural differences (which have driven us to beat our respective heads against the wall at one time or another).  I am trying to put him in touch with Dot in England so that the two of them, who have independently done such important work here, can combine their efforts.  I hope that in the future we can coordinate something between Australian, English and American parties and really make a lasting contribution.  Despite some of the hardships I have been going through within my own mind since coming here (and despite the allergies haha) I have spent time considering when (less than if) I’d like to come back here and whether or not I should invest time and money in a TESL (or whatever that acronym is) or CELTA (which is I guess the Cambridge equivalent) certification…its something else to consider anyways.  I think that if I come back here, I should like it to be with someone else…someone who speaks English fluently.  I have gained greater appreciation for the companionship of a person who understands (at least in terms of form if not content) what it is I am saying to them.  I have also gained a greater appreciation for real hugs, of which I have received three in the past 14 weeks or so.  There is more on that but I have something else I’d like to touch on before dinner so I will move on. 

The other reason I wanted to get this entry out rather than the other two is that Surendra, Mahesh’s younger brother, my host for half of my trip to Kathmandu, and the person I have probably spent the most time with out here, has been studying public health and preventative medicine at an apparently second rate college in Kathmandu and would like to move onto better things.  He is currently in the top of his class and is desirous of spending the next four years in a foreign country (probably China due to cost) studying medicine so that he can come back to Mirge and act as the village physician and pharmacist (as there is no doctor or pharmacy here now).  I know very little about independent fundraising, less about International NGO’s, and even less about their protocol when it comes to the sponsorship of higher education.  If anyone has information on these topics, Surendra and I would greatly appreciate a heads up.  If anyone is interested in teaming up with Dot and Chris O’Brien and co., who have been helping with Surendra’s tuition and education thus far, to contribute something in terms of finances or information or resources or whatever, also let me know that.  I think it will be easier for me to make something happen for him when I am back there in person, but I thought it would be nice to get the information out there so that anyone who might be reading this who knows about these things could check it out or do a little schmoozing on the part of Mirge, the Laligurash School and/or Surendra. 

Thank you for any help you can offer.  I hope everyone had a joyful New Year’s.  Metta from the East.