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}"

--------

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.