The Part where the Tibetans Forever Steal a Piece of my Heart.

We've been in India for two weeks now. We've spent the last week in McLeod Ganj volunteering, making all sorts of interesting, international friends and eating a whole lot of food. We keep joking that we're actually in Tibindia (that's a Tibet-India combination) since the Tibetan culture is so prevalent here. I love them! I absolutely love the Tibetans and everything to do with them (especially their food, happy tummy at last)! The organization that we've been volunteering through is called Tibet Hope Center, and we've met so many wonderful, profound people there. We've been spending a couple of hours volunteering each day and helping Tibetan refugees learn English, either in the conversation class or in the entry level class after their lecture time with the teacher, Kusang. Kusang is also the founder of the Center and is a really cool guy. He came to India from Tibet when he was pretty young and really benefited from all of the services the government-in-exile has set up here. As a young Tibetan refugee, if you maintain good grades, the government will pay for everything - your education, accommodations, even clothing, but while they are doing this they remind you of the importance of giving back to your community. What can you do once you graduate to better the Tibetan people? This mantra was in Kusang's thoughts when he graduated from college with a degree in Mass Media. At the time he was tutoring a monk friend in English (he speaks English, Hindi, Korean and Tibetan) who started bringing more friends to him who wanted to learn English. He realized this could be a real opportunity to contribute to his culture and starting looking into how to start an NGO. Kusang really had no idea what to expect in 2007 when he started the Center in one room with only a chair and a table, but after four years, the Center has grown tremendously and currently has over 80 refugee students enrolled in classes.

Today we volunteered in the conversation class where we talked to the more advanced students about how to give directions and how to go to the doctor. We made up all kinds of silly scenarios, which they laughed at (Tibetans have the greatest sense of humor ever), but I think it was actually very useful to them. In the entry level class we talked about asking the time, how to read a clock, and telling how long you've been/lived/studied/worked somewhere. We drew big clocks on the whiteboards and changed the time on it a bunch for them to practice. I also would write a time and ask them what they do during that time of day. It was a great way for them to get a little creative with the material we were learning, and I've had so much fun helping them learn that it's really reinforced my thoughts about working with English language learners in the future.

The students are so sweet. The majority of the class is made up of monks, with a few other adults thrown in. They are also mostly male, but I think the females in the class really love having Emily and me around. The one girl, Dolma, calls me "teacher, teacher" and insists that I sit next to her every time. The other girl in the class, Tenzi, is a Buddhist nun and the teeniest tiniest person you've ever met. I've taken lots of pictures of the class, which I'll have to add to here later.

All of the Tibetans are so positive, happy, and hilarious that I tend to forget the hardships they've experienced. Then I have encounters like I did today, and it's all put back into perspective for me. After the entry level class we were walking up the hill with one of the monks, Choeney. We were telling him that we were very hungry because we hadn't eaten lunch yet. We said we were going to get some thukpa, which is a spicy Tibetan soup with long spaghetti-like noodles in it. He said he wanted to cook food for us, which we thought might mean tomorrow or the next day. Turns out he wanted to cook us thukpa today instead of having us go eat in a restaurant. There was no way we could turn down this gracious invitation, so we followed him back up a rocky side street to his apartment building. We wandered down a series of dark hallways until we came to his apartment: one room that he shares with two other monks. Inside three mattresses rested on the floor against headboards made of cardboard boxes, and a two burner cook-top stood in the corner with a small table next to it. This comprised the kitchen. In the apartment there was also a shelf containing utensils, toiletries, and miscellaneous bottles, a very small end table, and a clothes line strung from one side of the room to the other where their extra robes were hung drying. The one window looked out onto the building next door. And that was it. A shared bathroom was located down the hallway as well as a faucet for running water.

Choeney left us in the room while he ran to the closest vegetable vendor to pick up an eggplant, green beans, and tomatoes. He doesn't have a refrigerator, so I would imagine that he has to buy only as much as he needs if he's going to cook at home. When he came back he pulled out a small cutting board, a knife and two pots and began to cook us some delicious, fresh thukpa. While he cooked each of his roommates came home. They both hung out for a little while and spoke a little bit of English, so we chatted about life in India. The one roommate was telling us that he and Choeney came here together from a monastery in South India about three months ago when they both got very sick. He also told us of how he had crossed the Himalayas on foot when he fled into exile. It took him 35 days and he got frostbite on his one foot during the crossing. He poured us tea out of a thermos that rested on the floor while he told us this, smiling in his maroon robes. Then Choeney poured the thukpa into the only two bowls they have, handed us some chopsticks and sat down to watch us eat. We were confused and asked him if he was going to eat with us, but he said he had eaten earlier. At that moment I had feelings of guilt and extreme gratitude all rolled up in one. I kept thinking that I should be making him lunch, or I should pay for the vegetables or something. I should do something, but I also realized that my presence at the Hope Center was giving the students like Choeney an invaluable gift. This was his way of repaying us for the time we spent with them laughing, hearing their stories, and practicing English. My heart broke a little bit as I sat perched on the mattress in the tiny apartment with the three monks smiling at me. How do they maintain such high spirits when life is clearly not easy?

Emily and I left the apartment a little over an hour ago. We ate all of the thukpa, drank multiple cups of tea, took a ton of pictures with them, and shared stories in broken English about life in our home countries. We are all visitors to India, some of us more permanent than others, and while we've found things we love about this place (freedom to be a monk without being thrown in prison, for example) we all miss our homes. Almost none of the refugees I've met here have any family in India, but they create new ties among the other refugees, knowing that they may not see their families again for a very long time, if ever.

This is not the first impoverished country I've visited. This is not the first time that people who have nothing have wanted to give me something which I've felt guilty about. I know that if I entered the majority of homes here, I would find a similar situation with multiple people living in one room. Yet somehow I have a hard time finding the logic when I encounter these situations. Here I am, sitting in this tiny room, telling refugees how I get to go to college and come visit India simply because I wanted to. At home I complain about how small my kitchen is even though I actually have a kitchen. I whine about doing my homework and going to my jobs when I earn more money in one day than many people do here in a week. I get angry when I'm stuck in traffic, while people on the other side of the world are trekking over mountains on foot, all the time worrying about being thrown in prison and brutally tortured if they are caught escaping. I have a fridge full of food, a closet full of clothes and shoes, my own car, my own bedroom, hot water all the time, and most importantly, my family close by. How fortunate I am to end up in this situation, and all of these different experiences act as constant reminders to be grateful for the life I lead.

The Tibetans are the most amazing, resilient people I have ever met. Coming to India just to volunteer at the Tibet Hope Center would have been worth all of the planning and money it took to get here. Their unwavering Buddhist faith gives them capacities for happiness and forgiveness that I don't think many people in the Western world understand. Everyone I've talked to here feels lucky and so fortunate to be where they are. They don't hate the Chinese government for what it's done to them. They openly forgive them and happily live their simple lives. They're constantly cracking jokes and sharing what little they have without a second thought. Even in class, we often don't have enough photocopies of the material for everyone. They all pass around the worksheets without ever thinking "that's mine."

Lunch at Choeney's might be my favorite part of the trip so far. It was the best meal I've had in India and I'll forever be grateful to the kindness and compassion he showed to almost complete strangers.

As you read this I hope you keep in mind how fortunate you are to lead the life you do, and always remember that happiness is a state of mind. You could have the most expensive flat screen TV, the newest iPhone, the fastest car, designer clothes, and eat off of dishes made of diamonds, but unless you show love and compassion towards others, what is all of that stuff worth? As cheesy as it sounds folks, it's love that makes the world go round. I love you all and miss you too.