"Next year is an auspicious year to tear down houses."

I heard a loud knock on the door. It was 6:30 am on a school day last October. I had woken up a mere 5 minutes before. My hair was a bird’s nest of fun. My Bhutanese housemate was passed out on her stomach in bed as I crept through her room to get to the door.

I opened the door to see my landlord standing in our garden.

“Good mooooorning Miss Sarah!” he was almost singing.

“Goood mooooorning Sir!! Great to see you!”

(Who was I kidding?)

“Next year is an auspicious year to tear down houses. If I get bank loan I think we must tear this house down.”

“And where should I live?” I asked. Is next year also an auspicious year to be homeless?

My new bathroom!

Bedroom in my new house.

Houses in my area dotted the mountainous landscape but were few in number and already housed a combination of shop owners, schoolteachers, and staff employed in the national park directly across from my school. I could look out my window and see almost all of the houses. And could name all of the people who occupied them.

“Do not worry Miss! I will build you a temporary shack to live in.”

“So don’t worry Sarah,” I thought. I reflected on the last 8 months I had spent scraping mold off the ceiling of this house in monsoon season, mopping up the floor every time it rained because half of our roof was merely a pile of thin wood planks, and going to sleep to rat concerts every night. I would do laundry every Sunday to find almost all of my clothes eaten by rats so later tightly sealed buckets filled our house, protecting our clothes from those sneaky little rodents. We only had indoor plumbing in our bathroom, so all kitchen chores were completed outside in our outdoor tap. During monsoon season, we filled up buckets to bring inside or used the small tap in the bathroom and listened to the rain pound on the makeshift tin roof that was added so our toilet would be "inside." In fact I distinctly remember walking into my grade 5 class in March and the boy in front row piping up, “Oh miss! You moved into my house from last year! We moved because our roof blew off!”

I smiled and continued with the lesson.

My toilet!

For whatever reason, I actually began to find this place really quite endearing in the spring and summer. It was peaceful, my bedroom looked right out onto a picturesque Himalayan valley, and my newly adopted grandmother, or angay, would drop off fresh vegetables to my door every now and then. Would “a temporary shack” be better or worse?

I lived with a Bhutanese girl last year who kept me more sane and became a very close companion. We would spend our evenings huddled around our heater laughing our guts out, reflecting on the day, and talking of cultural differences between Canada and Bhutan, with Hindi or Dzongkha music crooning in the background. She was a couple years younger than I and was used to a slightly more luxurious life in the Bhutanese capital. When the rat concerts became less thrilling for her, she would bring her mattress into my room and sleep right by my bed for protection. I didn't mind her company.

Cow food! Yumm yumm

After picturing what my “temporary shack” could look like, I “shifted” houses on my final weekend last year in December. Four cooks from school showed up at my door, strapped my bed to their back with rope, picked up my few belongings and marched down the road to a concrete house directly across from my school. I’m now living on the ground floor of a big house in a small two-bedroom apartment surrounded by teachers, their families, park staff, and a tiger chaser next door. “Tap tap” the cooks knocked on my bedroom window that faced the valley below, “boys come visit at night sarah. Tap tap.” I chuckled it off, slightly questioning if the historical act of “night hunting,” a terrifying way of finding a spouse, still existed here in my community.

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My hot water source. Used for instant coffee,
laundry, showers, and everything in between.

I usually get home from school at about 4:00 after making the three minute hike down the mountain from the staffroom. I wash dishes piled up from breakfast and lunch quickly then either make some tea or head to my friend’s to have tea with her family upstairs. Any remaining food scraps I put into a bowl and stand outside screaming “Kaaarma.” Karma, my old student, runs up the mountain, takes the vegetables, and gives them to his mother who magically turns it into mush for her cows. (my brilliant way of keeping the cows full so they don’t wake me up with their, “moooooo!!” at midnight from hunger.) Now I am ready to go for a walk with teachers at school. We walk or run about 3 km to a local holy water well on the side of the mountain. “If you drink from here, your voice will be the most beautiful,” said my friend. If you drink from here, you will get stomach pains for the rest of the week, I thought, gulping down the water.

Look at that cute little kitchen!

Around 6pm I light my gas stove, chop veggies, wash rice to put in my cute little rice cooker, and prepare a vegetable curry. If I happen to be out of vegetables, I put on my gumboots, grab my flashlight, and steal some spinach from tiger chaser’s garden.  I usually eat dinner by about 730 either alone or with my friend who lives upstairs. I’ll bring my rice and we’ll share curries. Due to my heavy course load this year, I tend to be up until about ten planning and in bed to read or watch my guilty addiction to Gilmore Girls until eleven.

Gas stove. "You should not light.
You will explode the house," said a teacher when he moved me in.

My refrigerator! Yumm yumm

I wake up naturally with the sun around 6 but doze in my bed until 6:50 am at which point an electronic british lady exclaims, “it is 6:50, it is now 6:50 tiiiiime to get up.” I have successfully mastered multi-tasking, a skill that has taken me at least a decade to accomplish. Here goes my morning routine. I dash to my bathroom, fill my 3L water heater, and plug it in. If we do not have electricity, I fill a big pot of water and put it on the stove. While the water is boiling, I wash one cup of rice with my indoor plumbing and kitchen sink, and put on the rice cooker. I chop one tomato, onion, spinach, and fry two eggs. After the rice goes “ding!” I add it to the veggies for my fried rice breakfast and wait for my water to boil to make my instant Nescafe, praying every morning, for Starbucks coffee.  I strip down, pour the remaining boiled water in my bucket and mix with cold water for my bucket (fucket) shower. Water takes about half an hour to boil, so I usually have enough for about half a bucket of water for my morning shower. I alternate mornings of soaping my body, or shampooing and conditioning my hair every morning. On Sundays I can take a full body and hair shower when I have an hour to heat up water. I get out of my shower, hear the school bell ring, signifying the start of yard cleaning for the students, giving me exactly twenty minutes to dress and run out the door, up the mountain, to school.

The bucket shower. 

The school week runs from Monday to Saturday at lunch. The closest vegetable and fruit market is in the nearest town a 45 minute drive away. So, after lunch on Saturdays, usually consisting of leftover fried rice from breakfast, I will wait patiently and charmingly on the side of the east-west high way outside my house for a nice driver to pick me up and drop me off in town. It can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour. Sometimes I try to look desperate and starving, so drivers will be more likely to pick up this foreigner in desperate need of apples and cauliflower. Because I do not have a fridge, I have to go about once a week for produce. For my sanity, I pick up a little chocolate and disgustingly sweet Indian wine in town too.

Living room in my new house.

Sundays are usually spent enjoying sleeping in. I really like coffee. In Bhutan, I mostly enjoy the act of drinking the coffee, versus the actual coffee itself. I like taking my time to sip my coffee. Sunday mornings give me the time to do this and enjoy fresh French toast, with the bread I get from town the day before. A plate of French toast has also proven to be a good bribery method for my neighbour to burn all my garbage, since I tend to light the garbage, and then get distracted. It would be just terrible if the foreign teacher caused a massive forest fire wouldn’t it? By noon I usually complete my laundry for the week. I soak it in soap in my bucket for about an hour, rub it to bits on the rock outside my house, squuuuueeeeze out the soap, and hang to dry as I contemplate that wool was the stupidest material I could have possibly brought to Bhutan.

Cooking curry most likely. 

My  one heat source. If there's no power, you freeze.

Laundry day!

There’s something ever so satisfying about putting effort into everyday basic activities that I take for absolute granted back home. I love that I make my shower and literally wash my laundry. I love that I know which garden everything in my kitchen comes from. I go to sleep on Sundays feeling satisfied. Thinking back to my life I know all too well and that I left back home, and how I’ve adapted to this completely foreign simplistic new life in ways I never thought imaginable, bring a smile to my face. Some days I do long for my fancy espressos and hot showers, but this is how I have chosen to live. I strongly believe that anyone can live anywhere. And that’s pretty cool to be able to slide right into another life just like that last piece of a puzzle. And so here I sit on my mat outside my house, gazing out into the himalayas, watching my bucket laundry dry, as I slip into this alternate, beautifully seductive world. 

Ms. Gold wants her sushi, please.

I walked into my grade 7B class. This is a class all of newcomer students from surrounding remote villages. 40 students to be exact. “Gooooooood morning Miss!” they belted out as they stood up.

“How are we feeling today?!” I asked.

When asked this question, Bhutanese students and teachers alike always respond with the standard “I. AM. FINE. MISS.” Last week we discussed alternative adjectives they could use and if they weren’t feeling comfortable, they could simply give me a thumbs-up (yeah I’m feeling great!), thumbs to the side (meh, things could be better) or thumbs down (GET ME OUT OF THIS SCHOOL.).

So I walked in the other day to shouts of “AWESOME!” and “SO EXCITED MISS” and “ISHHHHHH.” (Which was a great addition to “thumbs to the side”).

I have fallen a bit too in love with this particular class. They are bursting with good, positive energy, and seem to be overjoyed constantly about a foreign teacher, “chillup” in their class. Something happens between class 6 and 8 where girls in Bhutan suddenly go quiet. I find it incredibly concerning. I perceive these students, especially the girls, sitting in class so shy and anxious to open their mouths, praying they are thinking the right answer that they become (on the surface) shut out from everyone surrounding them. I partially believe it is an effect of the rigid education system here that all too often inhibits class discussion and encourages only right answers, without learning from mistakes. I consistently tell my girls to continue being opinionated, to think critically about the material being presented, and most of all to laugh and enjoy. I find myself doing this especially in this class. I pray they will continue to be as outspoken and opinionated and genuinely funny. I hope they never change.

I put March 11 on the board. A girl at the back quickly insisted that it was march 10, it couldn’t possibly be March 10. “I agree” said a boy beside her. Soon enough the whole 40 person class decided it HAD to be March 10.

“Nope, I really think it’s March 11 everyone. I will check the computer,” I said, now really questioning the date. Sure enough….

“I think I should get a prize. I just won against 40 of you!” I said, pretty impressed with myself.

The class burst into a huge applause. I took a few bows at the front of the classroom.

A boy at the back suddenly turned to the girl beside him, “so what happened to March 10?”

to the girl's response, “I ATE it.”

I didn't even know what that meant but I could not control my laughter neither could the rest of the class. Neither could the girl who said it.

“What does March 10 taste like? Does it taste really good?” I asked.

A few minutes later we reviewed the definition of a metaphor versus a simile. Students were asked to come up with a list of interesting nouns in a minute. They were then asked to share these with their partner and compare them using “like” or “as” with an explanation. The following are a few of their answers:

“Miss Sarah is like a parrot! Because she talks so much english like parrot!”

"Miss Sarah Gold is like {insert hindi cartoon character}":

"Sonam, what is my name?"

"Your name is Miss Sarah Diamond. We thought gold was more fancy. Same like Diamond though. It's our own words."

"Oh i like that! that's great! now explain why i am a cartoon character."

"Miss sarah diamond you are sooooooo crazy. always moving arms. like {insert hindi cartoon character}"

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Weekends in Bhutan last from about Saturday at noon (if you’re lucky) to Sunday. Yesterday we had a staff meeting for about 3 hours, which the principal was good about speaking in English for the first ten minutes of. I am as incompetent as my students think in picking up the local language. Over a year here and all that makes up my Dzongkha vocabulary is, “good morning, good evening, how are you? Elephant, frog, and leech.” If I meet a leech on the road, we’d have a pretty good conversation, but that’s about it. But what’s absolutely fabulous about Dzongkha is that those who speak it drop English words left, right, and centre. I call it “Dzonglish.” I would imagine this has developed from the influx of tourists since the 1960s. This makes me able to follow about 3% of conversations. This particular staff meeting was about improving English standards (writing, speaking, listening, and reading) in our school, which I felt very strongly about and had recognized needs across all of these areas through last year. But the meeting was all in Dzongkha. I couldn’t believe it, but I also felt that blurting out, “why don’t we begin improving English by speaking in English?” would be ever so slightly harsh. After contributing some new project ideas to the discussion where I thought appropriate, I found my mind wandering to sushi. We had been sitting in the staffroom for about three hours over lunch, without lunch, and for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything but sushi. Even at the most inopportune times when teachers were discussing malnourishment in the school and the cuts to funding by the World Food Program, my completely self-absorbed, selfish mind could just picture sushi. I had to have it. At least I was probably smiling the whole meeting.

I’ve become good friends with a young man who lives in my same housing complex. I was initially drawn to him because his hair was more than one centimeter in length, which is longer than any other man I had seen in Bhutan. Not only was it more than one centimeter, it was actually passed his shoulders! A rebel no doubt. Since then, he has cut it, but he continues to wear his own hand knitted hats and those his grandmother makes for him, so I have to ask him every now and then to remove his hat to see how much hair he is really hiding under there. Dorji speaks very limited English but I find his hippie character very endearing. Nothing romantic between us, just a good friend.

I saw him after the staff meeting and asked if he would like to join me for a walk to our local monestary. I’d never really asked him about his life. For whatever reason I wasn’t interested and I simply just enjoyed walking, playing cards, and laughing about whatever in his company. Yesterday, however, I was suddenly genuinely curious. It took us about twenty minutes, but eventually he said that he had left school at class 1 to become a cowboy. “Damn, you could rock a cowboy hat.” I thought. Of course, what he meant was that as an only child he had to help his parents look after the family’s cows. He did this until he was 15 at which point he moved from remote southern Bhutan to the country’s capital and was accepted as a class 10 student, because of his age. This part seemed fuzzy, since in the remote areas age is not a factor in getting into school late. If you are 14 and have only completed class 2, you will be 14 in class 3- end of story. The students in my classes don’t seem to notice the age differences, which is a beautiful thought compared to how students would treat teenagers in elementary schools back home. It really warms my heart. Anyways, after class 10, Dorji left for the mountains in Nepal to be trained as a sculptor and was then hired at our local monestary as a sculpting teacher.

 

I had been interested to see Dorji’s classroom for a long time and decided to stop by on our walk. It was about the size of my bedroom located just below the monestary. Clay sculptures filled the tables with pictures of Rimpoches and impeccably postured Buddhas. A monk dashed in and handed me a clump of clay as if to say, “give it a go! Make the knee-tall Buddha like the one staring us in the eye across the room.” Dorji put the clay in a bag and hurried me out the door before I could attempt the intricately carved Buddha. Phew! We walked a short distance and stood on a rock protruding from the mountain side, overlooking a small village in the valley below.

This seems to be where walks with friends typically stop. The simple act of being so immersed in nature while simultaneously being surrounded by civilization, is a very refreshing feeling. I could see miles of valley and mountains below me and monks who dotted the tree covered landscape on either side. Trucks flew by behind me, delivering various goods to the nearest town, but I was totally at peace. I’ve never found it easy to fully bring myself to meditation but I consider this act of gazing out into our natural environment meditation within itself. I let out a deep breath, looked to the spot on the mountain in the distance that was my home, and headed back.

"Don't mind the driver, he keeps sleeping, but I'll keep him awake"

View from the Haa Valley, western Bhutan. 

I hopped onto a makeshift seat in a beat-up old van. This was the first ride that had come in about one hour of waiting outside Trongsa town- the closest village (22 km from me, 45 min drive on rough road). You can easily get a hitchhike from my village into town, where the closest market exists, but getting out? Hahaha. Beside me sat a woman probably around my age, a recent high school graduate in the front, and the sleeping driver. The graduate turned around, “don’t mind him in back, he’s our father. He’s been drinking since 4 am when we left Mongar. He’ll go to sleep.” (Mongar is approximately an 8 hour drive from Trongsa). I turned my head to see an older farmer grinning cheek to cheek behind me. I couldn’t help but stare at this alcohol-induced smile. It was fantastic. I flashed a smile back then glanced down at a recent text message I had sent to a friend about the ride I had taken to Trongsa earlier that morning:

Just got a hitchhike with a guy who ten min in called tourists “terrorists” and said the nickname of ….’s husband is ‘hitler’. Then he told me all about the farmers in my village whose faces were mangled from leopard attacks. And he seemed so damn normal at the start!”

Anything would be better than that initial ride. But maybe not half as interesting.

“So how do you plan on keeping the driver awake?” I asked the graduate.

“He looks awake, no? I just tap his shoulder, you’ll be fine. Bahaha.”

And so we went. At points, I actually thought the car was going to fall asleep along with the farmer in the back. And the driver. I glanced to the sheer mountain drop on my left to see how far I would fall if the car did start snoozing away.

“So you’re a spinster?” asked the graduate.

Haha. “How old do you think I am?” I replied.

“I guess 23.” (not bad.)

“Almost. 25. So that makes me a spinster?”

“You are 25. You are not married? Yes, you are a spinster. Bahaha”

I’ll take that. I remembered the car rides last year where I told men I was married and my six children were back in Canada. Eventually one of these days, it would come back to me. I’d take the same ride with the same guy and bam! get caught for all my fibbing.

Window faces. 

The calm bumpy drive quickly turned into an interrogation by the graduate in the front, who’s charm ended 20 minutes in. “Where you from? Our city equivalent to your village? Bahahaha. You like teaching? I would hate to be a teacher. Our students are terrible? Why you live in Tshangkha? You must miss your family. Bahaha. You travel alone? Do you have friends here? You are eating Bhutanese food? Do you cook? Bahaha.” If he didn’t laugh so much he could’ve easily added fourteen more questions in.

“You eat food?”

“Yes, I eat food! Do I look hungry?”

“I hear in Australia and Canada you don’t eat food?”

I learned quickly into my first year that “food” translates into “rice.” But it cracks me up every time, so I go along with it. “Oh my goooodness I’m staaaaarving, I haven’t had food for days” (as I jokingly keel over about to faint and die.). The Bhutanese have a great sense of humour and I think this particular confusion could be our favourite joke at school.

When the car finally stopped at my house, I shook the graduate’s hand and gave the family a bunch of broccoli- the only thing I could offer that wasn’t buried in the depths of my knapsack. The sister of course stuffed it right in my bag, shaking her head, as if to say, “very kind of you, but unnecessary.” After putting it on her lap about three more times, I finally handed it to the graduate who took it excitedly.

“Bahahaa” I thought.

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This ride took place during our local holiday of Domche. A festival lasting for four days during which family and friends would gather at the local Dzong (parliament buildings) to watch mask dancing and enjoy the music. The purpose of this festival is to rid us of our sins and prepare us for death (how ironic). After spending almost every long weekend last year traveling, I made the decision to stay in my village this weekend. Simply put, I was exhausted from the week.

Grade 6 girls giggling away. 

School in Bhutan begins about mid-F ebruary but it is not until March when you finally begin to teach. Teachers were dropping like flies at our school- transferring schools to be with their loved ones, transferring for better service opportunities, transferring to get away from the canadian kid…. It had been nothing but total craziness at our school for the past month as rumours spread that new teachers were coming, old ones were leaving, some decided they wanted to take off to Australia. We must have had about three timetable changes in two weeks. Really keeps you on your toes, “what will I be teaching today?” Having been trained as a science teacher, thrown into teaching three grades of English last year, I was happy to see on my schedule that I would be teaching a variety of courses this year- two classes of grade 7 english, grade 6 english, grade 5 social studies, and HPE (phys-ed) to class 2 and 4.

I was more than excited to relax for this weekend in preparation for tackling, if only, my new class 5s the coming year. The course distribution is done in a sort of auction-like way, where our names are placed on a board and subjects are called out. It never occurred to me last year when no one wanted the class 4s that there was a concrete reason for it. I threw my hand straight up in the air, “I’ll take them!”

I spent last year teaching three grades of english but focusing almost every ounce of my energy to keep my grade 4s from literally jumping out the window and off the mountain. Better yet, to keep me from throwing the students (or me) off the mountain. This was a class full of 35 students from remote villages in Trongsa, who were more content to cut eachother’s hair, swallow pen ink, fight with eachother, climb out the window, and scream profanities, rather than possibly sit in a classroom and listen. Numerous times I would catch myself yelling, “Sonam! Why are you cutting Tshering’s hair?” or the best, “Tshewang, why did you go to the toilet on the warden sir’s roof?” Was I really expecting them to respond with a reason?

The famous class 5s.

For some insane reason I predicted that after one month being away from the classroom they would have matured exponentially over the December break and come back like young adults. I found myself on the very first day, a couple weeks ago, raising my voice, “shall I throw you alllll off the mountain today?” to a huge round of laughter and our keen class captain piping up, “miss, this would NOT be a good idea.” I agreed and instead placed a map of the world on the board. “Can anyone tell me what this is?” A hand shot straight up in the air, as did this student’s voice, “MAP OF CANADA MISSSSS!!!!!” (Slow and steady, I thought). I handed out a map of Bhutan several minutes later. “What would be a good title for this map?” One of the keener, more quiet girls in the class threw her hand up, “MAP OF SARAH MISSSS!!!” Although they are some of the most endearing students I’ve ever worked with, I lose my patience quickly in this particular class. One morning last week, however, they were ridiculously good (which unfortunately triggers “you were definitely beaten ‘nicely’ by the previous teacher” in the back ofmy head). I complimented them on their behavior to the response by one boy, “see Miss Sarah? We have proven ourself!”

You’re right Pem Dorji, you will not be thrown off the mountain today.

I consider myself to be a pretty disciplined teacher most of the time. I try to keep my cool. I’ve never actually thrown a student off a mountain. Rarely raise my voice. But to try to discipline these students in one way or another only to know that they will continue to act in the same way the following days, continues to be a challenge. I love to laugh. I’m good at laughing. So, more often than not I have to

maintain my role as a teacher, to struggle to keep these students on the mountain, focusing on the task at hand, as I use every ounce of my energy not to roll on the floor in complete giggles at their jokes. This is the main reason I came back to Tshangkha- because of my students. I love them with all my heart and I genuinely miss them on long holidays, like Domche. And so hear we are, year 2, with the craziest of them all.