Blog #26: Wise Words

Being an English teacher, I have spent the better part of the school year thus far drilling essay-writing skills into my students’ young, malleable minds. Avoid writing in the first person. State your thesis and three supporting points clearly at the end of your introductory paragraph. Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that introduces your supporting point and links it back to your thesis. Provide examples to back up your supporting points. Some get it, some don’t. In order to help them I have written several essays as exemplars. When I finished teachers’ college I thought my days of writing essays had come to an end, but alas, a teacher’s job is never done, and sometimes we need to become students once again in order to teach.

In the spirit of essay-writing, and as a means of limiting this blog entry to a more reasonable length, I have decided to write an essay supporting the validity of a maxim for living in Bhutan that Keira, so brilliantly articulated. I apologize if I break one or two of the “rules of good essay-writing,” I only do so in order to inject a bit of colour into what may otherwise be a dull entry. Here goes…



Bhutanese culture is undeniably one of the richest, most unique cultures in the world. With the mighty Himalayan mountains isolating Bhutan from even its closest neighbours, the country remained entirely disconnected from the rest of the world up until the 1960’s. Even then, careful attention was paid to preserving and promoting Bhutanese culture. However, Bhutan is a rapidly developing country, and with development comes modernization, and often with modernization comes a dilution of culture. Mobile phones, television and the internet all play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Bhutan, for better or worse, and the result is a growing concern that Bhutanese culture is changing too much, too fast. There are, however, elements of Bhutanese culture that seem to be here to stay. Archery will most definitely remain the national sport for years to come; Buddhism isn’t going anywhere; hospitality will forever be one of the people’s top priorities. However, for a foreigner living in Bhutan there is one piece of Bhutanese culture that stands out among the rest: unpredictability. Due to the culture’s general disinterest in timing, its willingness to change schedules without providing any notification to the parties concerned, and the general futility of planning, a maxim for any foreigner living in Bhutan is “prepare for everything, expect nothing.”

People often want to know the time zone in which Bhutan is located. It’s not EST, and it’s not PDT or MDT, nor is it ICT or ISP (yes, I’m looking these up as I write this). The truth is I could tell you the time difference between Bhutan and Toronto, I could tell you other cities/countries that share the same time zone, but the only acronym that is at all relevant in Bhutan when it comes to time is BST. Oh! That’s Bhutan Standard Time, right??? Wrong (but you’re forgiven). The reality is that there are no three letters that when combined better capture the Bhutanese sense of humour or timing. After all, BST or Bhutan Stretchable Time is as big a part of Bhutanese culture as ema datsi or the gho.

It is not that the people choose to ignore timing or feel it unnecessary to set timelines for events – they do in fact schedule things meticulously; but there is a general understanding that whatever timing is proposed for this or that has a margin of error somewhere in the range of plus or minus three hours. Western culture, on the other hand, tends to allow for a five to ten minute margin of error when it comes to the adherence to schedules before bolts and steam begin to shoot out of people’s ears…or is that just in cartoons? And yet, people don’t seem even the slightest bit bothered by not knowing when things will actually happen.

For example, the Jigme Sherubling staff football team has become somewhat of a legend since acquiring one athletically gifted – not to mention handsomely chiseled – young, Canadian teacher. Being the gracious hosts that they are, they have invited teams from other schools to play matches on their rocky, mountain field numerous times. Typically these games would take place on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, as teams often have to travel for an hour to reach the school. On paper (which is rationed more strictly than rice in communist China) the game is likely scheduled for 2:30. School ends at 1:00 on Saturdays, which leaves just enough time to rush home for a quick lunch, change into one’s highly fashionable football uniform, and return to the field for a brief warm up. But by the time the day’s events make the leap from paper to practice the brief warm-up has evolved into an epic display of dazzling moves, thunderous shots and laser guided passes, all of this before the opposing team has even arrived. By the time they do arrive, usually somewhere between two or three hours late, the home team has often graduated from warmed-up to overcooked. By the time the match is finished and the losing team has taken the winners out for a beer (the standard wager), the whole ordeal has consumed at the very least 5 hours.

For that handsome and – did I mention – highly intelligent teacher, the time would be of no concern were his workload not so demanding. It is difficult – or maybe futile is the better word – to get frustrated when the culprits adhering to BST are strangers. But when your colleagues, people who are aware of the implications of wasted time, are committing the offence it has the potential to make one want to pull out their thick, silky-smooth hair (is that enough of the narcissism?).

During the school’s intramural track and field competition teachers were required to facilitate the event by recording times, heights and distances. The responsibilities were divided equally among the teachers so that each teacher was responsible for supervising only one event on one of the four days. So on a Tuesday afternoon, that charming Canadian teacher was scheduled to supervise all of the track events for Druk house, one of the four school houses. Being the responsible young man that he is, that teacher asked the organizer of the event what time he should report for his duties, to which the organizer assuredly replied 4:00. So you can imagine the teacher’s surprise when 4:00 came and went, when 4:30 whizzed by, and when the clock struck 5:00 and his events had yet to begin. You can imagine this calm and collected teacher’s exasperation when he was told at 5:00 that there wasn’t enough time for the events to take place before evening study, so they would carry over to the following day. Not to worry that hours of precious time had been wasted standing around waiting – hours that could have been spent correcting essays in the kind of detail that has been asked of the teachers or planning lessons for the following day’s classes. It’s only time, and time in Bhutan is stretchable; hence, one must prepare for everything, but expect nothing.

Though BST does force one to prepare for anything but expect nothing, it alone is hardly cause for the birth of such a pithy maxim. Bhutanese culture’s willingness to change schedules at the drop of a hat without notifying anyone prior to doing so is truly enough make one want to abandon the civilized world of human beings and live with the animals where things make sense.

At the beginning of the year all teachers are asked to create a block schedule, a calendar of the school year indicating exactly what one will be teaching during any given week. The block schedule is just one of the many organizational documents being required by the Ministry of Education in order to improve accountability and professionalism in the field of Education. Sounds good, right? Well it is in theory. Actually it is in practice as well…in most countries. But in a country in which a six-day work week is all of a sudden transformed into four days, the block schedule would better serve as toilet paper than as an official document. How can a teacher possibly follow a schedule when days of the week are vanishing with absolutely no warning, like Khaling’s sun in the mid-summer monsoon? Yet, during the teachers’ mid-term reviews they are asked to submit their block schedule and all lesson plans so that the documents can be cross-referenced in order to monitor progress. This is obviously a headache for the teachers, but at the end of the day education isn’t about the teachers, it’s about the students, right?

There is such a strong emphasis on academic results at many schools in Bhutan – a consequence of a highly competitive education system in which there are fewer positions available in school than there are school-aged children. Apart from the standard school day, students are forced to study for one hour from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m., one hour from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., and one hour from 7:30 to 8:30 pm. In the weeks leading up to exams any and all extra-curricular programs are cancelled in order to provide students with additional time to study. All of this extra study time is superb, however, it is no replacement for class time in which the teacher can guide the students through difficult concepts and students can ask teachers questions. Of all the class time, one of the most precious periods is exam review week: the week in which teachers reduce a term’s worth of material into a more manageable package of information and allow students to ask questions or raise concerns about said material. So a responsible teacher – an organized one – would allow for enough time to provide students with one week of review. In fact, a well organized teacher would also carefully plan the content and/or concepts to be reviewed on each day. A well organized teacher might plan the week so that they can use the final day of classes to provide their students with some strategies/tips for writing the exams and allow for any last minutes questions/concerns. A well organized teacher would also probably confront his/her superiors when rumours that the last day of school is going to be cancelled begin to circulate. A well organized teacher would continue to follow their schedule, praising themselves for doing such a great job managing their time after their superiors assure them that class will proceed as usual. A well organized teacher will want to gouge out to their eyes and tear out their fingernails one by one when they arrive at school on the final day of the term only to discover that class has been canceled and those important last minute reminders that they had so desperately wanted to provide their students with will remain unspoken and unheard. A well organized teacher should prepare for everything, but expect nothing.

BST – or the Bitterness Susceptibility Test – and the potential for one to miss important changes in schedules if one is foolish enough to surrender to the body’s urge to blink or sneeze can be trying of one’s patience, but there’s nothing quite like a logical paradox to make one want to run for the hills (of which there are many to choose from) and subscribe to the foreigners’ maxim. If you don’t believe me, riddle me this: How do you plan something in a country that doesn’t allow for you to plan things but requires you to plan them? Enough said.

Futile is the only word to describe any effort to plan things in Bhutan. For example, summer vacation is a time when everyone wants to get out of Khaling. It’s not that the town doesn’t have its charm; it’s more that all the town has is charm…and potatoes. So at the final utterance of the words “pencils down” there begins a mass exodus of students and teachers. In order to avoid the mass exodus and to account for the long and arduous journey to Lhuntse, one teacher opted to take several days leave and depart from Khaling two days prior to the end of the term.

Or at least that was the plan. He packed, he cleaned his house, he got all of his work in order, and on a Monday morning, through a light mist of rain he lugged his heavy bags into town and waited for the bus. He waited...he waited some more…and then even more. The bus was nowhere to be seen. Through a variety of ludicrous hand gestures and pantomimes he managed to ask the Nepali restaurant owners in town whether they knew if the bus was coming (the bus usually stops at their restaurant for lunch), to which they replied a noncommittal “not sure.” In all fairness the previous two days had seen almost 48 hours of non-stop torrential downpour so the road conditions were not great, but at the same time neither was the flow of information. So he waited…and waited…and waited…until at about 5:00 he realized that if the bus did finally arrive in Khaling, it wouldn’t arrive in Mongar until 1:00 in the morning at the earliest, and that thought was more than he could bear. So what did that Canadian teacher do? He lugged all of his heavy bags back up to his apartment through what had become a steady shower of rain. He wasn’t going anywhere that day.

The next day was blue skies and sunshine so that brave young man once again prepared for his early departure. He packed, he cleaned, he got all of his work in order, and on that Tuesday morning, he lugged his heavy bags back into town and waited for the bus. He waited…he waited some more…and then even more, until at about 2:00 he decided to ask the restaurant owners about the bus once again. Before he had even made it through his first carefully choreographed movement the hotel owner stopped him and said, “Not sure.” But by 4:00 the teacher was quite sure and once again he found himself retracing his steps back up towards his apartment.

The next day marked the beginning of the exodus, and though the Canadian teacher still had his heart set on traveling to Lhuntse to meet up with two of his Canadian friends, it no longer seemed practical or realistic. Bus tickets were no longer readily available. Actually, quite the opposite was true. Westbound tickets for the remainder of that week had been reserved weeks if not months in advance due to the sudden increase in the number of people trying to leave Khaling and the number of buses remaining constant. So instead of reaching Lhuntse before the term had officially come to a close, that Canadian teacher found himself trapped in Khaling well into the break with little idea of how he might escape. It was almost as if he had been punished for his desire to plan his summer vacation, but at the same time he was being punished for not having planned his summer…vacation!?!? In his naïveté he had prepared for everything and expected something – he had attempted to plan something, forgetting that Bhutanese culture doesn’t actually allow for planning…except when it’s required…sometimes. How could he be so foolish? It obviously makes far more sense to prepare for everything and expect nothing.

Although there are countless aspects of Bhutanese culture that could charm the pants off of a priest (not that that seems quite as hard to do these days), its unpredictability is not one of them. Bhutan Stretchable Time, though a charming concept in theory, can result in one feeling as if they are spiraling through a dimensionless vortex when put into practice. And although there are people who might think that showing up to work only to realize that work has been cancelled would be a nice surprise, they fail to recognize that the result is that one has to try to fit a whale in a gold fish’s bowl; the amount of work doesn’t change, just the amount of space in which one has to fit it. Lastly, imagine the torment that comes from identifying the futility of making plans, but being forced to make plans regardless, and then having those plans fall apart faster than an M. Night Shyamalan movie. As much fun as all of that sounds, one would be better served by removing the fork that they have impaled into their own thigh, taking a deep breath, and simply adopting the foreigner’s maxim for living in Bhutan: prepare for everything, expect nothing.

Blog #25: Where am I?

DISCLAIMER: This will be my last disclaimer. I have apologized all I can for my lengthy blog entries. The reality is that my blog has taken on a life of its own and I no longer feel as if I can limit how much I write. It has been a long time since my last entry, and a great deal has happened. I have spent a long time trying to condense this entry into a manageable length, and this is the best I could do. Happy reading!


Let me start by saying that I love Khaling. It is not the most beautiful place in Bhutan by any means, but it does possess a certain charm that I haven’t really felt anywhere else. I have become accustomed to watching the thick white clouds roll over the mountains behind the school each and every afternoon, and the ensuing showers no longer bother me. There is something surreal about jogging along the two-lane, transnational highway that twists and turns through the mountains as the clouds creep over the road, enveloping me and cooling me in my sweat. Khaling has become my home. But I didn’t really realize just how much it felt like home until I left it.

It is extremely difficult not to feel slightly trapped here. For weeks all I could think about was getting out of here and seeing somewhere new, somewhere different. It’s difficult living in a foreign country and only experiencing one tiny sliver of what it has to offer. I realize that I’m not here to travel, I’m here to work, but when I finally go home I would like to be able to say that I saw all there was to see here. The challenge lies in the fact that we work six days a week and that it is impossible to get anywhere here in less than a day when you don’t have a car. So in the midst of a serious bout of cabin fever, I arranged to take a few days leave from work and visit Ann in Mongar and Keira in Lhuntse.

Even with a few days off of work, Lhuntse is a long way from Khaling (in terms of travel time, not distance). Realistically it takes almost two full days of travel to drive the 200 odd kilometers from point A to B. The bus leaves Khaling at 12:30 in the afternoon and arrives in Mongar at 7:00 that night, and then the next morning the bus leaves Mongar at 11:30 and arrives at 4:00 in the afternoon. So with four days of travel time I had to get creative in my planning. On Wednesdays I don’t have any classes after lunch so my day technically ends at 12:30; Thursday, May 27 was a national holiday here so I wasn’t required to be at work; and Saturdays only count as a half-day because we finish school at lunchtime, so I figured if I left on Wednesday afternoon I would only have to take Friday, Saturday and Monday off of work (two and a half days) and I could actually have a six day break: ample time to make it to Lhuntse and back.

So I cheated. I skipped out of my fourth period class at about 12:15 just to make sure that I made it into town in time to catch the bus that was loosely scheduled to leave at 12:30 (this departure time is based entirely on inductive reasoning; in reality the bus leaves twenty minutes after it arrives, and it arrives when it arrives). When I arrived in town at 12:25 I asked around about the bus and was happy to learn that it had not yet arrived. My relief turned to frustration about half an hour later when I was still waiting for the bus to arrive. My frustration turned to aggravation when the school’s lunch hour came to an end at 1:40 and the bus was still nowhere to be found.

The bus finally pulled into Khaling at about 1:55. UK had come into town during lunch to see me off and to help me sort out the arrangements of my journey, as the major players involved in getting me to Mongar spoke no English. He had spoken to the people at the restaurant where the bus stops a few days earlier to find out whether I needed to buy a ticket ahead of time. They told him that the bus is usually quite empty and that getting a ticket in advance was unnecessary. You can imagine my surprise then, when the bus rolled to a stop and not a single seat was vacant. But UK worked his magic and spoke to the bus driver, and by the time the passengers finished their lunches at the restaurant, the bus driver and ticket collector had “made room for me” on the bus. I thanked UK for his help (something that has become all to common), gave him a hug and our patented handshake, and loaded my bags and myself onto the crowded bus.

The “room” they had made for me was the middle seat in the very back of the bus. Anyone who knows anything about carsickness knows that the back of the bus is the absolute worst place to be in the event of an episode. And anyone who knows anything about Bhutan knows that if ever there were a road to induce projectile vomiting nausea, it would be the highway that stretches from east to west across the Bhutanese Himalayas.

I was actually relatively unaffected by carsickness. I only experienced one or two waves of nausea, but with some deep breaths and focus the queasiness passed. I have always found that the remedy for nausea is usually a heavy dose of mind over matter. The human mind is a powerful force of influence, one with the potential to work for or against its operator. Learning to recognize the mind’s tendency to focus on the negative and teaching it to redirect its influence into a positive force is something that is not always easy, but it is something I have learned to do when necessary. Because nausea is really just in the mind, it is one of those things that, in my experience, can be conquered with the right amount of metacognition.

What was actually more challenging to overcome was the discomfort of occupying the middle space of a bench designed for five, but seating six. I shouldn’t be complaining because the bus was so overcapacity that it actually reached the point where people were sitting on the spare tire in the front of the bus or even standing for the whole journey, but at times I questioned whether that wouldn’t actually be more comfortable.

The bus was occupied almost entirely by Indian men – labourers who had arrived in Bhutan to work in construction. This is relevant only because Indians tend to have a very different understanding of the notion of personal space to us westerners. More than once my neighbour to my left rested his head on my shoulder while he caught a little shut-eye, while my neighbour to my right stretched his legs out into the space my legs were hoping to occupy.

The stares basically started the second I stepped on the bus. For the first ten minutes of my journey they made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I have become accustomed to being stared at – it’s simply something that comes with the territory when you live in a town where you are the only white person people have ever seen in real life – but usually I will make an effort to ease my discomfort by approaching people and talking to them, even if only to say kuzuzangpola or hello. But after an attempt at speaking with my neighbours on the bus I realized that no one – and I mean no one – spoke a word of English and that any attempt at communication was futile. Ironically, my attempt to communicate with my neighbours only drew more stares, and soon almost all the passengers were swiveled in their spots, their heads popping over the seat backs or protruding into the aisle, studying me as if I were the subject of some fascinating experiment.

I put my headphones in my ears, pushed play on my iPod, and let myself slip into my own little world. It was much more comfortable there. The stares didn’t stop for quite some time, but they were somehow less intrusive – less threatening – with the shield of my music. The faces that stared back at me ceased to bother me and instead plastered a smile on my face that stretched so wide I thought my neighbour might feel it. All of a sudden I realized where I was and what I was doing.

Keira and I have discussed several times how every so often a little voice inside our head screams at the top of its lungs, “Where am I!?!?” I think it is a fair enough question to ask given our situations. What’s strange is that I haven’t been asking myself that question more often. Life in Khaling has become so routine that I have become desensitized to the many cultural eccentricities that I experience on a daily basis. It’s usually only when I share stories with Keira that I actually realize what we’re doing and just how crazy it is.

I find that it is often easier to appreciate an experience when I take a step back and remove myself from it temporarily. The bus ride from Khaling to Mongar proved to be the perfect reminder. I did nothing but stare out the window for the first two hours of the journey. Khaling may not be the most beautiful place in Bhutan, but the area surrounding it is certainly a contender. The mountains soared high into the periwinkle sky while the valleys and all the life they contained rested peacefully bellow. Clouds clung to the steepest escarpments and crept ever so slowly up the cliffs until they escaped into the endless sky. Massive rivers that snaked through the forests became nothing more than tiny earthworms as we climbed and climbed, higher and higher. And all the while I sat silently, being stared at, unable to communicate with anyone around me. I don’t think I have ever felt so completely foreign before.

Where am I? This place is so incredibly beautiful, and my words can hardly do it justice, nor can my photographs, sadly. Physically it is so very different from home. What am I doing here? I’m a city boy. I’ve lived in cities my entire life. And now, here I am, living in my small mountain town, with nothing but rolling mountains for hours in every direction.

And then something strange happened. As I stared out at the massive mountains I really started to ask myself “Where…am…I?”and a surge of tears began to well in my eyes. I thought about the immensity of the world – all the people, places and cultures, all the diversity that makes it so interesting and so exciting, so beautiful. And then I thought about the immensity of this experience. I mean, how lucky am I? How many people in this world could even point out Bhutan on a map? How many people can say that they have lived on top of a mountain in the middle of the Himalayas? How many people can say that they have willingly left the comforts of home behind only to blindly push forward into the unknown? My tears were not tears of misery, nor were they tears of frustration. They were tears of pride. The decision to come here had not been an easy one. I often think about the sacrifices I made in coming here, the things…the people I left behind. But I no longer question whether that decision was the right one. I already feel like I have accomplished more than I expected to just from being here. I know that by the time I go home I will have grown so much. I have already learned so much about myself and about how I want to live my life. The challenges of living here continue to present themselves on a near weekly basis, but I have persevered thus far, and I no longer have any reason to doubt that I am fully capable of dealing with whatever is thrown my way. Maybe it was that I had just overcome one of my biggest challenges to date, my illness (see blog #23), or maybe it was just that I had finally taken a step back from what I am doing, but either way, as the bus crept forward I was filled with an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment. I mean, after all, where am I?

By the time my tears of pride had dried and crusted on my eyelids the bus rolled to a stop on the outside of the narrow mountain highway. As the driver popped his door open the flashing lights of an ambulance whizzed by our bus. Through the front windshield I could see two more ambulances just ahead of us at a rocky bend in the road.

Human curiosity got the best of most of us. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow rightly points out “ the fascination of the abomination” that humans experience. When we see the flashing lights of an ambulance we are immediately drawn to the cause of its presence, despite the fact that we know we will more often than not find a scene of misery – one of pain and suffering. People didn’t even hesitate. They stepped off the bus and walked directly towards the bend in the road.

Thankfully, no one was actually injured in the accident. The ambulances appeared to be there as more of a formality than a necessity. A construction truck and a small hatchback had apparently been rounding the same blind corner at the same time when they collided with one another head on. They must have been going quite slowly because there really wasn’t a great deal of damage to the car. A dented fender, a broken headlight, a hubcap bent and pinned against the side of the mountain. People gathered around the collision and seemed to be discussing the damage. Not understanding what was being said, I strolled back to the bus, appreciating the opportunity to stretch my legs.

I really only appreciated that opportunity for about fifteen minutes. After an hour of waiting, uninformed, I was beginning to question whether I was going to make it to Mongar that night. The bus had already been two hours late in departing from Khaling, and the journey to Mongar supposedly took about seven hours. The bus had rolled to a stop at about 5:00, and by 6:00 it didn’t seem like any progress had been made in clearly the collision. I really just wanted to share the absurdity of my predicament with someone, so called Keira to explain what had happened, but two or three minutes into our conversation I lost cell phone reception. It returned just long enough for me to text message Ann to inform her that I was drastically behind schedule, and then disappeared once again.

Finally, at about 7:00 two police motorcycles cruised by our bus towards the scene of the accident. About ten minutes later the passengers and bus driver returned to the bus, the engine grumbled, and we were once again making our way through the mountains.

The bus careened through the mountains, inertia sending all of its passengers flying into its sides as it made 180 degree turn after 180 degree turn, up and down the mountains. It appeared as if the bus driver was attempting to make up for lost time – something I would have appreciated had the cause of our lost time not been a road accident. Rain spat down on us from thick gray clouds that were undefinable in the graying sky. Daylight turned to dusk and dusk to dark in a matter of minutes.
By the time Mongar city came within sight I was exhausted. It was about 9:45 and I had been stuck on the bus, wedged between two men for far too long. I’m embarrassed to admit this, and I’m hoping that my exhaustion excuses it to some extent, but I made a classic Bhutan traveler’s mistake. I text messaged Ann and told her that I was close and that I would probably be arriving in fifteen to twenty minutes. After all, I just saw the lights of Mongar and it didn’t look that far away. I should have checked the time before making this prediction, but I think it was such a relief to finally see my destination that wishful thinking clouded my judgement. It is important not to trust your eyes when judging distance in Bhutan. Nothing is as close as it seems.

I remember making the same mistake during a stretch of our journey from Punukha to Bumthang. We were going to stop in a place called Trongsa for lunch. Our bus screeched to a stop beside a beautiful chorten overlooking a lush valley. On the other side of the valley lay Trongsa Dzong and a few hotels, one of which was our destination for lunch, so we quickly piled back onto the bus and kept moving. Well, it was half an hour before we arrived on the other side of that valley.

Mongar was close, but not that close. Its light came into view and left several times before I stopped watching. The sky had cleared by then and the moonlight shone brightly through the rear windshield, aptly casting a shadow of the window’s bars on the back of the seat in front of me. After a long and tiring day of ups and downs, the bus was certainly beginning to feel like a prison I would never escape from.

* * *

I arrived in Mongar at 10:40, only regaining cell phone reception after stepping off the bus. I tried calling Ann to find out how to get to her place, but her line busy. Keira had visited a few times and knew where she lived, so I tried calling her. Busy. I knew exactly what was happening. They were on the phone with one another, clogging up their lines, and I had no idea where I was going. First I texted Keira telling her to get the hell off the phone and stop talking to Ann, then I texted Ann asking her how to get to her place. In the meantime, I asked someone in town if they could tell me how to get to the lower secondary school because I knew that Ann lived nearby to the school. The woman asked me who I was looking for. I told her, and she told me that she was one of Ann’s colleagues and that she could take me to Ann’s place. I accepted her offer and piled my bags into her tiny car.

When I got to Ann’s place she wasn’t there. I knew what that meant; she was waiting for me back in town. I tried calling her once again and this time I got through. She told me that her door was open, so I dropped my bags inside and then made my way back down the road to meet her. When we finally arrived back at her place I was completely spent. Ann very kindly made me a quick dinner, we chatted as I ate, and then I hit the hay in a hurry.

I barely spent any time in Mongar on my way to Lhuntse. I woke up at about 9:00. Ann and I sat on her balcony overlooking Mongar city and enjoying some of the real Tim Horton’s coffee that she had brought from home. It was extremely relaxing and I envied Ann’s lifestyle. She had just a few of the luxuries of home – real coffee, a running shower with hot water, a washing machine, a refrigerator – but that was still so much more than I had. I’m not sure I would actually want those things here, but having a little taste of what life used to be like was definitely nice.

A little later we wandered into town. I brought all my bags with me (my knapsack, my guitar, and a shopping bag filled with a few snacks, my book and my glasses) because going back to Ann’s place before my bus left didn’t seem to make any sense. We did a bit of shopping for vegetables to bring to Keira (her request – it seems Lhuntse’s supply of vegetables is even more pathetic than Khaling’s), and then started enquiring about where to catch the bus. We received a few different versions of the story and finally settled on the one that was told with the greatest confidence.

When the bus arrived I said goodbye to Ann for the time being and lugged my bags on board. As soon as I stepped in the aisle of the bus a young guy sitting at the back told me to pass my bags back to him. I did so and followed them to the rear seat. This time the bus was much roomier so I didn’t mind my positioning.

The guy next to me chatted on his cell phone for a little while. I sat and I waited, preparing myself for another long, uncomfortable ride. Then the guy hung up his phone, turned and spoke to me.

“Where are you going?” he asked (a common greeting here, similar to “how are you?)

“I’m going to visit a friend of mine in Lhuntse,” I replied.

“Are you a tourist here?”

“No, I’m a teacher. I’m living in Khaling.”

“At Jigme Sherubling?”

“Yeah,” I replied unfazed. It seems like everyone has either gone to JigSher at some point in their education or knows someone who has.

“Oh. And your friend is a teacher too?”

“Yeah, she’s teaching at Phuyum,” I told him, searching to see if he knew of it.

“Cool. I live in Autsho. It’s about half way between Mongar and Lhuntse.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, not really knowing where exactly Autsho was.

“Well, I was just talking to my friend who drives a taxi about taking me to Autsho. Would you want to take a taxi? It will be much faster.”

“Um, maybe, but how much will it cost?”

He explained that it would cost each of us 100 ngultrum to get to Autsho, and then once we arrived there he would help me flag down a ride to Lhuntse. The plan actually didn’t seem so beneficial to me, as it cost more money and was likely to take me just as long to get there, but it did sound more comfortable and more likely to result in adventure, so I accepted.

The taxi ride was definitely fast and comfortable. Sonam proved to be a really nice guy. He was working in construction because he had failed to qualify for university. His English was excellent, and I could tell from his style that he was heavily influenced by American film and television. He told me that he wanted nothing more than to visit Canada. His old principal had studied in Canada (New Brunswick I assume), and had told him all sorts of amazing stories about living there. He was so familiar with the culture from television that he felt like he would really love it there. After my previous day’s experience of not being able to communicate with anyone, it was actually really nice being able to talk to Sonam, and during that drive to Autsho the time passed quickly.

When we arrived in Autsho there wasn’t a car in sight. It was a national holiday in Bhutan, the Buddha’s Parinirvana, so not many people were traveling. Sonam waited with me for a little over an hour, and finally, when no cars had passed and coaster bus (a slightly more upscale bus) arrived, he talked to the driver, and arranged for me to sit in the front seat the rest of the way to Lhuntse. I thanked him, arranged to meet him back in Mongar on Sunday (though that never happened) and said goodbye.

I had forgotten just how beautiful the drive to Lhuntse was. I won’t go into too much detail because I already described it in my entry about dropping Keira off when we first arrived, but it really is one of the nicest drives I have experienced in this country. The road follows the river the entire journey, most of the time right along its banks, but occasionally soaring high above it, up through the rising mountains. Across the river, steep cliffs made up of bright orange rock rippled upwards towards the clear blue sky. On the more gradual inclines lush forests mixed with grassy coverings. It was as though Lhuntse’s colours could have made any artist’s palette all the brighter.


* * *

I arrived in Lhuntse town at about 4:30. Keira was going to greet me where the bus dropped me off, but before she arrived I ran into some students who were headed towards the school, so I called her and told her I would just meet her at her place.

The Dzongkhag’s athletic tournament was taking place at Phuyum that weekend, and by the time I followed the students to the top of a steep hill I could see all of Phuyum in action. The football field, basketball court and everything in between was littered with people moving to and fro. The massive mountains stood just beyond the school grounds, watching over the day’s events, guarding the school from whatever lay beyond them. I carefully navigated my way down the slippery mud path until I was standing in the school’s parking lot, and there was Keira.

We didn’t do much that first night. We went for a quick walk and Keira showed me around Lhuntse town, and then we just hung out and I met some of Keira’s friends. I can tell you that Lhuntse town is not the most exciting place. The market is divided into upper and lower market, but essentially the two are the same. There is a short strip of wooden shops offering only the most basic goods. I thought I had it bad in Khaling, but Lhuntse’s market was truly destitute. In terms of produce, there were only a handful of shops offering any vegetables, and even then the only options were potatoes, onions, and some very rotten looking cabbage. We did eventually stumble upon one shop that had a fresh supply of garlic, a welcome surprise that excited Keira very much.

The next morning we wandered around the school for a little while, watching bits and pieces of the various sports events taking place. Breakfast was being served in the school’s MPH (Multi Purpose Hall) and there I met a few more of Keira’s colleagues, all of whom were lovely.

Keira had been coaching the girls’ football team (soccer for all you ignoramuses) up until a few weeks prior and was eager to witness her girls compete in the championship match, so we set off on a mission to enquire about the day’s schedule. We asked every teacher we came across, but no one could give us a straight answer.

“…I’m not exactly sure.”

“…I heard right after lunch.”

“…Probably not until later.”

The ambiguity continued for well over half an hour. It became quite apparent that no one had the slightest clue when any of the day’s events were taking place. In fact, it was beginning to look as if there was no schedule at all. Eventually, Keira and I agreed that it was silly to sit around waiting for the game when the majority of people were saying it would be towards the end of the day, so we compromised and decided to go for a walk along one of Keira’s favourite jogging routes right by the river and return to the school at lunchtime in order to catch the girls’ football final.

It took us about forty minutes of walking down a dirt road carved out of the side of the mountain before we reached a small clearing of brush just beyond one of the tiny communities that we had passed. We stepped through the opening and wandered down the trail. On either side of us, dense patches of tall marijuana plants blew in the wind and led us down towards a beach.

Lhuntse seems to be the land of marijuana (although it grows wild throughout the country), with massive patches of the plant springing up in the most unusual places (including patches in the middle of the beach). Though it is widely available to anyone who chooses to pick it, the consumption of marijuana is still illegal in Bhutan, and few people, if any, dare to challenge that law. The result is six-foot high plants with massive leaves sparkling in the sunlight. To a foreigner, the sight is quite amusing – I mean, look at all that pot! – but to the Bhutanese marijuana is just another one of the thousands of species of flora living in their Himalayan home.

Keira and I spent the rest of the morning relaxing by the river, playing our guitars and signing, working on new songs and practicing old ones. I hadn’t realized this before, but Khaling is seriously lacking a beautiful river. It was so nice being able to get away from “civilization” and just sit with my feet dangling in the cold, swift water. It was so peaceful listening to the rush of water crashing against the rocks.

We stayed by there until about 11:30 and then Keira started to get anxious about missing the girls’ final, so we packed up our things and headed back to Phuyum.

As we were hiking up the school’s driveway (and I mean hiking!) we came across a few of the girls on the football team. The good news – they had won; the bad news – we had missed the game. I know that Keira was extremely disappointed that she had missed the match and felt quite guilty to boot. I felt awful that she had missed the one game that she had so desperately wanted to see, and couldn’t help but think that if I hadn’t come to visit that weekend she would have seen it. At the same time, neither of us were really to blame. The real cause of her missing the match was a general lack of organization and communication, something that I think we have both experienced on a regular basis in Bhutan.

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at Keira’s place. The little kids who live upstairs from Keira eventually came down to play and completely wore us out. They were cute little guys, but definitely troublemakers, and they spoke basically no English which made them all the more of a handful. I was actually quite impressed with Keira’s ability to communicate with them in Dzongkha. I don’t mean to suggest that she has learned a great deal of Dzongkha, but she has definitely learned far more than I have, and her grasp of simple commands is quite strong. Unfortunately, Keira’s strong sense of obligation to the school occasionally forced her to pop down to the field to make an appearance and to help out in any way she could, leaving me alone with the troublemakers. When she returned for the last time in the late afternoon, the two little ones, Yeshi and Jigme, were literally bouncing off the walls. Keira picked up one of them holding him like a baby, and I swung the other one, giggling, over my shoulder, and we carried them upstairs to their parents.

I was craving momos like nothing else, so when we came back downstairs we decided to head into town. Keira had a bunch of work to do, so I told her to bring it with her and do it at a restaurant. I threw a book I was close to finishing into my bag (The Book of Negroes…highly recommended if you haven’t yet read it) and we marched up the slippery mud path towards town.

We only ended up staying in town for an hour at the most. The reality was that it wasn’t so inviting. We were sitting in a dingy basement, Keira studying and myself reading, both of us trying not to get distracted by the television playing “Home Alone” in the corner of the room. We packed up and headed back home.

But Keira was not done her work. Oh no! Not even close. She had seemingly endless stacks of homework books to correct, and I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t going to be able to relax until they were finished. So when we got home she worked...and she worked...and she worked some more. I have to say that I was impressed by her focus during those next four hours, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wanted to smack some sense into her. I have had numerous telephone conversations with Keira about the amount of work she does. I understand that she feels like she has to do it all, but I have warned her several times to limit the amount of work she brings home each night. There is endless marking here – this is just a reality of teaching in Bhutan. For us Canadian teachers, I think we feel an obligation to put in a wholehearted effort to be as thorough with our marking as possible. I know I have picked through every single word in students’ essays, correcting each tiny spelling, grammar or punctuation mistake, as well as providing comments and suggestions for improvement. But I also think that this is gong above and beyond the expectations here (not that there is anything wrong with that if one has the time). The reality is that many Bhutanese teachers deal with the endless evaluation process by putting in minimal effort in their marking. More than once I have watched my friends at JigSher flipping through students’ notebooks, ticking check marks here and there without even looking at what they are doing. I mean it. I have a had long conversations with people as they “mark” students’ work, all the while maintaining steady eye contact and paying no attention to the books they flip through. There is just too much to get through and not enough time to do it all. It doesn’t help that the students often only have one notebook (notebooks are “expensive” and many of the students come from extremely poor families) and can’t take notes in class if we don’t return their books in a timely manner. So I understand why Keira works so hard and feels like she needs to do so much. I do too. But the difference between us seems to be that I realize that sometimes more needs to be done than is humanly possible, and that if I try to do it all I will be miserable and not enjoy my time here. After all, I’m living in a foreign country, having this insane experience, and I want to enjoy it! I don’t mean to suggest that Keira isn’t enjoying her time here – she definitely is. I just don’t want her to burn out, and it's easy to get caught up in all the work if you don’t set limits for yourself.


* * *

The next day I slept in a little while Keira watched many of the sports events. I was honestly feeling fairly exhausted and just wasn’t up to mass-socialization at the time. Keira came back to her apartment in the late morning and we discussed the day’s plan. Again, there was no schedule for the sports events, so planning became extremely difficult, but what was quite clear was that Keira was still feeling guilty about missing the girls’ football final and felt as if she should stay at school to offer her support and assistance. I didn’t mind, but I wasn’t particularly interested in hanging around the school’s campus all day (in fact I was looking forward to spending some time alone in this new place), so I packed up my guitar, my moleskin and a book, and headed back down the dirt road towards the river.

I was actually planning on going back to the beach where Keira and I had spent the previous morning, but on my way there I saw a little opening in the brush on the side of the road and my curiosity got the best of me. I stepped through the gap and wandered down a scraggily path lined with cow dung, dodging the branches and weeds that lay in my way. Finally, I came across a grassy clearing in which a single cow was grazing. I felt so incredibly alone standing in the middle of that clearing with just a single cow to acknowledge my presence. No one else in the world knew where I was. If I wanted to I could disappear. That is true freedom.

From where I stood I could hear the roaring river and feel the moisture in the air. I didn’t waste any time with my bovine buddy. I knew the river was just to my left, and when I stepped from the grassy field through one final wall of foliage, my foot landed on rock.

If I had to estimate I would say that I was no more than a five to ten minute walk from where Keira and I had spent the previous morning, but the terrain here was quite different. There was no beach here; just a rocky embankment that led first to a pool of crystal clear water kept calm by an island strip of elevated rocks, and then to the swift white water of the raging river beyond the island. In the middle of the calm pool lay several large boulders, flat and smooth – quite inviting really.

I really had my eyes set on the island that separated the two bodies of water, but after several failed attempts to navigate my way across the fairly deep pool (remember I was carrying my guitar), I gave up on that and hopscotched my way to one of the big boulders in the middle of the calm water.

That rock became my home for the next three or four hours. For the first little while I played guitar, then I lay down and let myself unwind. I was still exhausted from my bus ride to Mongar, and it felt amazing to just sit there with no plan, no agenda, nothing at all.

It was so relaxing that I actually dozed in and out of consciousness for the next hour and a bit. I awoke to the sun beaming down on me, my face burning under its blistering rays. The sun! I had forgotten that there was a sun. It’s a foreign concept to a resident of Khaling; we just have clouds and less clouds. But when I looked up there wasn’t a cloud in the sapphire sky.

I think the sun rejuvenated me. I perched myself up on my tiny piece of dry land and just sat there taking it all in. I was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. I don’t think I have ever felt so insignificant. In the grand scheme of things I was no more important than the cow that grazed in the grassy clearing just beyond the river’s rocky banks, or even the rock on which I sat. In that narrow river basin, the animate seemed no more relevant to the world than the inanimate. In fact, I was starting to believe just the opposite to be true.

One tragic inadequacy of the living is that our time on this planet is finite. But the mountains that hid me, the river the rushed by me, the rocks that surrounded me, and the wind that blew through my hair – they had been there for all of Earth’s history. And they haven’t just existed in a passive or trivial sense of the word, but rather as significant contributors in shaping the present, and they will continue to be there to shape the future of the planet.

Then there is the animate. The more I think about it, the harder I find it to rid my mind of the image of parasites clinging to their host. Humans are obviously the worst kind of parasite, but the reality is that no living thing really does anything. They serve no real purpose on an existential level. To consume or be consumed. How sad is that? The animate and inanimate: dichotomies. Sitting alone in the middle of those prehistoric hills, I wanted to hop the fence.

But then the cynic in me stopped myself from descending into an inescapable pit of despair and put everything back into perspective. It is just that fact – that the living’s time on this planet is finite – that obligates us to spend our time wisely and experience all that we are capable of experiencing. The irony is that sometimes we don’t actually need to do anything to experience.

It was at that moment that I think I experienced real silence for the first time. But it wasn’t the way I would have imagined it to be. It wasn’t the absence of all sound. It was the harmony and balance of all of nature’s sounds simultaneously. The river’s water rushing over the rocks, the rustling of the trees’ leaves, the blowing wind whistling in my ears. Does absolute silence exist in the natural world? Absolutely not. Not possible.

I don’t know what it was about that rock, but there was some kind of energy flowing through it. Or maybe that particular moment in time was significant in some way. Either way, I have never reflected so deeply on life and the different courses it can take. I thought about all of the important decisions I have made in my life and the ways that they have shaped my experience and character; each one has ultimately led me to this time and place. If you had asked me a year ago what I would be doing right now I never could have predicted this. But that is what makes life exciting. We really don’t ever know what direction it might head in or what turns it might take. It is a series of decisions, each one changing our course forever. I will not be the same person when I return home. How could I be? Even in the short amount of time I have been here, too much has happened. Life is different here, for better or worse, and I am seeing things from a new perspective that I can’t ignore. I have grown, and I’m sure I will continue to grow, and somehow this makes all of the sacrifices I’ve made to come here seem worthwhile. I will quote Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” a poem that I had the pleasure of teaching my class IXs this term, one which I had read many times before, but struck a chord as I stood in front of a class full of Bhutanese students:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I__
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I had to drag myself from that rock when the familiar grey of overcast skies finally swallowed the sun. I didn’t want to leave. It felt like if I had just jumped in the river its cold current could have carried me off to some transcendental destination, a world where enlightenment flowed like the water rushing by me. But, alas, I was still stuck in the real world, a world full of limitations and obligations. But I feel as though I am seeing things more clearly now. I have realized that my only real obligation is to myself – to live my life in a way that makes me happy and proud. I see that the only limitations in this world are the ones that we set for ourselves. I have come so far in my journey, learned so much, and yet I honestly feel that this experience is limitless. There is no telling what tomorrow might bring, there is no saying what new lesson I might learn, and no predicting who exactly I’ll be by the time I return to Canada.

My cousin, Greg, the most well-traveled person I know, gave me a moleskin before I left, and on the inside cover was a beautiful passage from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. I will quote a small portion of it.

“Marco Polo said that the more one is lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understands the cities he has crossed to arrive there; and he retraces the stages of his journey and he comes to know the port from which he set sail, and the familiar places of his youth, and the surroundings of home.

“…the traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed. Arriving at a new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had; the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

I feel as if there is something lying in wait for me here. Perhaps I have started to uncover it; perhaps I have only scratched the surface. But the excitement lies not in the destination, but rather in the journey. My journey has taken me from the comforts of the big city to the confines of the Himalayas, from a point of ambivalence to one of confidence and purpose, from a time when I constantly asked myself, “What am I doing here?” to a place where I constantly have to ask myself, “Where am I???” I haven’t arrived yet; I would not try to kid myself into believing that I have, but I’m starting to feel that I’m well on my way.

Blog #24: Playing the Name Game

I’m usually quite good at learning people’s names. I actually find it incredibly uncomfortable not knowing someone’s name when I am supposed to or when I have had ample time to commit it to memory. I think most teachers would agree that learning students’ names can be a challenge at the best of times. Usually a teacher will have, on average, eighty or ninety students each year. Add that to the number of students taught in previous years who are still students at the school and it’s surprising that there is any space left in a teacher’s brain for the knowledge that they hope to share with those students.

In my previous teaching experience it took me about a week to remember the majority of my students’ names (I will not claim all of them), and even then it required that I study the class seating plans meticulously. But once I learned their names I could immediately see the benefit of my diligent studying. I could call on any student to answer a question in class, I could ask where someone was if they were absent, I could simply say “hi” to my students when I passed them in the halls. Knowing a students name is an important part of establishing a relationship with them and earning their trust. It also makes them feel like their teacher actually cares about them.

Well, what was a difficult task in Toronto is near impossible in Bhutan. Yes, the class sizes are definitely a factor contributing to my difficulty in learning my students‘ names, but it is their Bhutanese names that make this task particularly confusing. Most Bhutanese people have a first and second name, but neither is their family name. Family names do not exist here. There is nothing indicating one’s family lineage or heritage; only a first name and a second name. So I have to learn two names for each student. No big deal, right? Wrong. The problem is that there are really only a dozen or so common names in circulation among Bhutanese people, both male and female. The result is a confusing mishmash of these names, which leave teachers with their heads spinning. I assure you that I am not the only one who feels this way. Even the Bhutanese teachers find it difficult to get straight.

You want an example? Okay, here is a list of class XI Sci A students’ names:


Now you tell me how I’m supposed to remember who Dorji Tshering is when he sits near Tshering Wangchuk. And how do I remember who Tshering Wangchuk is when he sits in front of Ugyen Wangchuk? And who the heck is Ugyen Tenzin?? Is he the guy who sits in the front row or is that Tshewang Tenzin?!? Or am I thinking of Jigme Tshewang?!?!?

Sadly, I still don’t have the answers. I have it a little easier with my class IXs because there are only 18 of them, and because I have recently become their class teacher (which means a lot more work for me, but also that I am responsible for this class and spend much more time with them). But in my other classes I have no choice but to resort to pointing and saying, “You. Speak.” Their refusal to speak also contributes to the challenge of learning their names. I have learned the names of my smartest students and the ones who participate the most, but those who choose to sit silently remain anonymous. Much of the time these are the students who would really benefit from a little push here and there, but it is difficult to push them when I don’t know who they are or what kind of help they need. This probably makes me sound like a horrible teacher, but I have come to accept that this is just the way it works here. It goes against everything we believe in at home, where one student’s failure is a failure of the whole system, but here many students are basically expected to fail.

Now, one last test. Tell me, which of the above students’ names belong to girls and which belong to boys? …Wrong. No, seriously, you were wrong, I guarantee it. Who said that Thinley is a girl’s name? Well that depends. Are you talking about Thinley Dema or Thinley Dorji? The former is a girl’s name, the latter belongs to a boy. Now what about Karma? Girl or boy? Well, Karma Wangchuk is a boy, but Karma Yangzom is a girl. Confused yet? One last example. The most common name in class XI Sci A, Jigme: boy or girl? Again, it belongs to both. So tell me, which Jigmes are boys and which are girls? The answer: Jigme Tshewang and Jigme Gyeltshen are boys, Jigme Chhoeden and Jigme Zangmo are girls.

The whole name game is extremely complicated, but UK did break it down for me and give me some helpful tips, which I will share with you. A person’s second name is what determines their gender. So it doesn’t really matter if a student’s first name is Tshering; what matters is whether it’s Tshering Phuntsho or Tshering Zangmo. The trick in determining whether the second name is male or female is the sound. Soft sounds are generally female names and hard sounds are generally male. So is Tshering Zangmo male or female? …If you said female you’re catching on. Okay, just to see if you really understand your Bhutanese names I will list a few more and you can take your guesses (I won’t answer now, but if you want to play along, post your answers as a comment and I will tell you if your right or wrong). Okay, here we go…


If the thought of it makes you a little queasy, welcome to my world. It ain’t easy being me, but slowly I’m learning.

Blog #23: Facing the Inevitable

I knew it was going to happen at some point in time. I remember joking about it with my friends at home before I left. I believe my exact words were, “I know I’m going to get really sick at least once.” Why would I say this? Well, it just seems like an inevitability when you are living in a developing country. The better question might be why would I have accepted this job and moved my life here when I knew that sickness was inevitable? Trust me, on Saturday afternoon I was asking myself that very question.

I suppose it all began on Friday at some point in time. I’m not exactly sure when, and I’m not exactly sure how, but what I do know is that I was fine on Thursday and most of Friday. I went for a jog on Friday evening (something I’ve been doing more and more frequently) and I remember thinking that I was much more tired than usual, but I chalked it up to the fact that I had done the same 7 km (3.5 of which are uphill in the Himalayas I might add) jog the day before and hadn’t gotten much rest in between. What does standout now, in hindsight, is that when I was stretching towards the beginning of my run, my balance was quite off, and I normally have quite good balance. Again, I chalked it up to exhaustion and pressed on. When I got home I was tired, but no more so than after any other run. My legs were also feeling a little stiff, but back to back runs can do that to you when are not yet used to jogging this frequently. I “bathed” (showered), changed into some fresh, clean clothes, and went to a restaurant with UK for dinner, as I was too tired to prepare anything myself.

I was fine the rest of the night. My mom called when I got home and I talked to her for a little while about some of my frustrations as of late, until we were cut off due to a collapsed network on my side of the line. I tried to call her back, but there was absolutely no signal. I also realized that I had no money left on my phone (phones here are all pre-pay), which is never a good situation to be in. So I put the conversation’s conclusion on hold for the time being, read a few pages of my book, and then passed out almost immediately.

I awoke at 2:30 a.m., my body on fire. At first I wasn’t entirely sure I was awake. I could just feel the heat from my chest radiating against my arms. Initially it felt kind of nice being so warm, like my blanket was really doing its job. But when I woke up a second time at 3:30, I realized that this was not so normal. So I raised myself out of bed, searched for my thermometer in my oversized first-aid kit, and took my temperature. Thirty-eight point four. Not so good, so I took two Advil in an attempt to control my fever. I was also filled with that cold-sweat sensation and I couldn’t decide which felt more comfortable, throwing my blankets off and accepting my convulsive shivering in an attempt to cool down my overheating body or controlling my convulsions by bundling myself under my blankets and feeling my brain frying like piece of puri (This comparison might indicate that I’ve been here too long already). I chose to bundle, as it was the only hope of getting back to sleep, and at about 5:00 I finally passed out.

The next morning I felt a little bit better. I was not perfect by any means, but definitely better. I went to school in a half-daze and did my best to push on. In my first period class I explained to my students that I really wasn’t feeling well, so I was just going to review a few things that we went over last week in grammar (Saturday is grammar day for my class XIs) and then have them do some practice exercises or any other work they needed to do. They were thrilled to have a work period (no one likes school on Saturdays) so they went to it. I sat down beside one student and began typing away at a book I’ve been working on for far too long. After about thirty minutes a tidal wave of nausea came over me. I quickly shut my laptop, packed away my things, explained to the class that I wasn’t feeling well and that I was relying on them to behave themselves, and left in a hurry.

I went straight to Master’s office. Master’s real name is actually Sonam Rinzin, I believe, though you would have a hard time getting that information from most teachers at my school. The only reason I know this is because Master also just so happens to be UK’s father. You would never hear anyone call him Sonam or Sonam Rinzin, however, because to do so you would be risking your life. For you see, Mr. Sonam Rinzin is referred to as Master because he is a master of Tae Kwon Do. He also happens to be the school nurse.

I told Master what had been going on and he gave me some Paracetamol (Acetaminophen or Tylenol for us Canucks), some oral re-hydration solution, and some antibiotics to take in case my symptoms got worse. I graciously accepted his offerings, thanked him, and ran home to use the toilet.

I had second and third period free, but class in fourth period and responsibilities after fourth period, so I decided that I would lie down and rest during my free periods. When I hit my bed my condition really deteriorated. My fever had returned, I now had diarrhea, my head was throbbing like no other, and worst of all, my entire body was aching from head to toe. I’m not just talking a little sore, I mean aching. No position was comfortable. My legs were by far the worst. I would stretch them, bend them, flex them, fold them, shake them, squeeze them, rub them, hold them. Nothing relieved the pain. The only thing, I came to realize, that provided any kind of relief – or perhaps satisfaction is the better word – was to expel a variety of grunts and groans each time I moved an inch. I later explained to UK, Namgay, and eventually Keira, that anyone walking by my house probably would have gotten a very wrong idea about what was going on inside. My breathy “Oh gods” and “Oh *@&$!s” could easily have misinterpreted as sounds of pleasure rather than sounds of pain. And I suppose to some extent they were. For whatever reason, they made the following hours slightly more bearable.

Needless to say I didn’t return to school that day. I called UK and asked him to see if he could find someone to cover my class and my class teacher responsibilities after school and he told me it wouldn’t be a problem.

At about 2:00 Namgay knocked on my door to check on me. He was carrying a package of Koka (like Mr. Noodles). UK was close behind him. They had come to check on me and to make sure that I ate something. The truth was I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I really wasn’t feeling up to it (solid food didn’t appeal to my stomach, and hot liquid didn’t appeal to my fever of 39.6), but they insisted that I eat. So Namgay slipped into my kitchen and prepared some soup for me, while UK sat with me on my bed and dabbed my head with a cool, wet cloth.

I am so lucky to have made such amazing friends here. They had no idea what kind of condition I was in, but they still came to check on me out of genuine concern for my wellbeing. Not only this, but they came with food with which to nourish me, and compassion with which to nurture me.

They hung out for a little while and then left to play a soccer game that I was also supposed to be a part of. They returned later to check on me once again, this time carrying three more packs of Koka and a package of more substantial soup. They hung out for a bit, we joked around, Namgay played some guitar, and eventually they went home.

I was somewhat relieved when they left, simply because I could only bask in my own misery when I was alone. The company was nice, and it certainly distracted me from the physical pain most of the time, but at the same time, it was effort that I didn’t really have the energy for. I was feeling incredibly dizzy by that point in time and I just wanted to lie down and rest.

The rest of my night was horribly miserable. The diarrhea really kicked in (I promise that’s as much detail as I’ll go into) and my legs felt like dull, rusty spoons were going to tear through my every pore. If anyone has ever had a bad infection, it felt somewhat like that, with an amplified pins and needles sensation thrown into the mix. No matter what I did I couldn’t get comfortable. And the fever! Oh, the fever! My head was completely ablaze and throbbing in pain. I could feel the pressure building to the point that my hearing became muffled. I continued to dab my forehead with a cold compress throughout the night, but just to give you an idea of how hot my head actually was, it took less that ten seconds of leaving the compress on my head before the cold water turned hot. I was forced to constantly re-soak the rag and reapply it to my forehead, which, I assure you, makes it difficult to sleep.

I got maybe an hour or two of sleep total, but between my stomach’s desperate cries for relief, my body’s angry disapproval, and my head’s relentless nagging I couldn’t really immerse myself in zzz’s.

I woke up on Sunday feeling just awful. My head was pounding and the familiar aching continued. I lay in bed for as long as possible, but I knew that eventually I had to get up. When I finally got up I realized that I had been sweating profusely. My sheets were drenched and my hair was soaking wet. But as I slipped out from under my blanket and chill came over my body and I was freezing. My fever obviously survived the night.

I went about my business in the bathroom, took two 500 mg Paracetamols, and plopped back down on my bed. I didn’t get under the blanket this time, but rather lay so my legs were covered but my torso could breathe.

An hour later I was feeling much better. I was still sweating profusely, but my fever was down, my head wasn’t throbbing quite as much and my legs only felt like only a few knives were stabbing at me from time to time, rather than thousands constantly. What price did I have to pay for this kind of relief, you ask; well, my stomach lost whatever stability it once had. I was running to the toilet and back all day. I’m convinced that I actually got more exercise on Sunday than I did on Friday during my jog. Sometimes there was an hour between visits, sometimes merely minutes; it was completely erratic and entirely beyond my control. Nonetheless, it was a trade I was more than happy to make.

So here I am. It’s Monday morning and the pain has subsided. My stomach is still playing tricks on me, and I didn’t quite make it to lunchtime before having to run home to use the bathroom and relieve myself of the overwhelming nausea that seems to appear out of thin air. I had a free period anyway, so I’m just taking it slow and resting whenever possible. There were definitely a few moments on Saturday when I looked out my window and asked myself what the hell are you doing here? There were moments when I looked at the people walking through town and for those moments I genuinely resented being in Bhutan. I have never been sick like that at home and I honestly don’t think it is possible to get sick like that at home. The only time I have ever experienced anything like that was when I was traveling through Vietnam a few years ago with my girlfriend at the time. In fact, my experience then was almost identical to what I went through this past Saturday, with a few minor differences. Firstly, I was with my girlfriend at the time, who could perhaps not provide me with any medical support, but did at least provide me with a great deal of emotional support. Secondly, I was in Ho Chi Minh City, which is a fairly developed city, and thus provided me with access to topnotch medical facilities and the medical expertise of a variety of expatriate doctors. Lastly, I was on vacation with not a worry in the world. My illness was a serious damper, but I had the time and freedom to wait it out and let it pass. My situation here provides me with none of the above comforts. I am a single guy living in a rural town with no hospital less than an hour’s drive away, and even then I have no car and no real way of getting from point A to B. Even if I had managed to get to a hospital, I would have had to worry about work the following day and about providing the principal with the proper documentation in order to prove that I was in fact sick; as if my sweat-stained sheets and empty toilet paper rolls aren’t evidence enough.

But I survived it in Vietnam, and now I’m just hoping that this was my one mandatory confrontation with complete and utter sickness in Bhutan. It was definitely a miserable experience and I feel as if I have beaten it, but then again it’s now Monday afternoon and I’m still lying in bed, and let’s just say that I have made more than one trip to the facilities in the process of writing this.

Blog #22: The Pains and Joys of Teaching in Bhutan

DISCLAIMER: This is by far my longest blog entry so far. I apologize once again to those of you who just want the gist of what’s going on. Apparently I am incapable of reducing my thoughts and reflections to a few words. I assure you that, just as with all my other blog postings, I have done my very best to only share with you the most amusing, absurd and transformative experiences of my journey. I hope you enjoy!

I realize that one of the major shortcomings of this blog so far has been that I haven’t really mentioned very much about teaching, which is in fact the reason for my being here. My failure to address the teaching aspect of my experience is not intentional, at least not on any sort of conscious level, but rather a consequence of being subject to so many other exciting things. But my teaching experience definitely does deserve mention, so I will do my best to communicate my experience in the classroom over the last three months.

When I think back to my first few days teaching here the one thing that really stands out in my memory is just how little an idea I had regarding what I was going to do. The fact of the matter is that this is my first year teaching and even if I were back at home I would have felt like I didn’t know where to begin. Compound this with the fact that I only arrived in Khaling the night before school started and you can imagine just how unprepared I felt. In all reality I really wasn’t told anything before marching into my first class. I arrived at school early in the morning, was given my timetable, and told to teach. Looking down at the timetable I was given I became confused. I was quite sure they had made a mistake. It said I was teaching “IX A”, “XI Sci A”, and “XI Com B.” I went straight to the principal to remedy the situation.

“Sir, I think there is a mistake in my timetable. It says I’m teaching science and commerce, but I’m supposed to be
teaching English,” I explained.

“No, no. Science and Commerce are the class sections that you will be teaching, but you will be teaching them English,” he replied.

This information would have been helpful, I thought to myself as I left his office and headed to class. I, of course, had no idea where I was going because no one had shown me where the classrooms were (the school is divided into several buildings, each of which contains numerous classrooms), but I asked a few teachers where class IX A was as I passed them in the halls, and they pointed me in the general direction.

My first exposure to the Bhutanese educational culture came the second I stepped through class IX A’s door. There was a shuffle of chairs against the wooden floor, every student popped out of their seat, and at the top of their lungs and in perfect unison they all yelled, “Good morning, sir!”

“Good morning everyone,” I replied, and I walked over to an empty seat at the front of the class and threw my book bag down. The students remained standing at attention until I realized that they wouldn’t take their seats until instructed to do so. “Sit down, sit, please.”

My first day with each class was much the same. I had no idea what I was doing and was genuinely rattled by the experience. I had thought of some activities on the bus ride to Khaling (we all shared our ideas with each other), but for the most part they didn’t seem very realistic. I passed around a notebook with a rough sketch of the layout of desks that I had whipped up in the first few seconds of class and asked students to write their names in the appropriate space.

Then I introduced myself and told my students everything about Canada and Toronto that I could think of off of the top of my head. I ended up speaking for almost the entire class, and only realized weeks later that I never really gave my students a chance to introduce themselves (I think this was partially because I was thrown off by the number of students in the classes). I don’t think they really minded at the time, and I think they were genuinely curious about Canada and their new, funny looking, strange sounding teacher. I still remember the one fact that fascinated them more than any other. I asked them the population of Bhutan, and they all obediently replied, “6 lack (or 600, 000 to us North Americans).”

“So there are six hundred thousand people in Bhutan. Okay, well where I come from, Toronto, which is the biggest city in Canada, there are over six million people. So the population of the city I am from is ten times the population of your entire country.”

This drew hysterical laughter as well as an assortment of bug-eyes and dropped jaws.

The end of class was just as confusing as the beginning. When the bell rang I wrapped up my lesson and said thank you to the class. They shouted back, “Thank you, sir.” I stood there waiting for them to leave so I could pack up my things and erase the writing on the blackboard, but not one of them moved, I felt like I was engaged in a staring contest. Both parties refused to blink. Finally, I realized that these poor students were not going to leave until I had left, and that they were missing a part of their morning recess waiting for me, so I shoved all my things in my bag and led the way out of the classroom, a wave of students on my heels.

Entering and exiting classes here is so very different from anything I experienced at home, as I explained to several colleagues who asked me about the difference in culture. At home, a teacher is generally in the classroom before students arrive (which is not difficult when students arrive 15-20 minutes late, as they did at one school where I did my practice teaching), and when students do arrive it often takes some authoritative commands to calm the class down and begin the lesson. Similarly, in Canada, at the end of class students are already packing up their belongings before the bell rings, and regardless of whether the teacher is in the middle of the most important and entertaining lesson of their lives, like Pavlovian dogs they are out the door the moment they hear the bell ring.

The respect for teachers in Bhutan is extremely impressive and something I think is much needed back at home, but at the same time, I also think it comes at a bit of a price. It is my understanding that this respect stems from a time when teachers used to beat children who “misbehaved”. I must strongly emphasize that there is absolutely no corporeal punishment taking place at my school, nor is there supposed to be at any school in Bhutan under the Ministry of Education’s “Child Friendly” schools policy, though I’ve heard the practice of beating children does still take place in many schools. So though it does not occur at my school, many of my students have at some point in their lives been subject to a beating or two for what was most likely an arbitrary offence. As a result, yes, the students respect their teachers (fear might be synonymous with respect in this example), but as a result, they are extremely timid when it comes to responding to questions or asking questions themselves. This continues to be a problem to this very day, as I will ask a question to the class and no one will answer, until all of a sudden eight to ten people mutter some inaudible response simultaneously. I then tell them that I can’t hear them when they all speak together, and ask them to raise their hands and I will call on them to answer. All of a sudden, once again, no one wants to answer. It is actually quite an amusing phenomenon if you don’t let it get under your skin or disrupt the lesson. I have learned to rely on several of the more confident students in order to keep the lessons’ momentum alive.

I think the number of students plays a significant role in the classroom atmosphere as well. I am actually quite lucky with my class sizes. I have only 18 students in my grade nine class and in my grade eleven classes I have 33 and 36 students. The classes are so big that it is almost impossible for me to remember everyone’s name (see blog #23 which is coming up) and it essentially provides anonymity to anyone who is seeking it (usually those students who need to be called on the most). I shouldn’t complain though. It might sound difficult to believe but Keira has one class that is 46 students. With classes this big, it becomes extremely difficult to ensure that all the students are learning. As an English teacher, it is also an absolute nightmare when it comes time for marking students work. For the last two weeks I actually haven’t been able to see my desk in the staff room because it has been consistently buried under piles and piles of notebooks and papers.

Perhaps the biggest challenge I have faced in adapting to teaching here is the lack of resources in the school. I think back to my student teaching days when I would hear teachers complain about not having the resources they needed to teach their class. All I can do is laugh at those memories. We may not have had all the resources we would have liked, but we definitely had most of the resources we needed. At my school, basic resources are unavailable. For example, for the first few weeks I watched as my box of chalk disappeared in front of my eyes. Chalk is like gold here. It took me a week straight of people stealing my chalk to realize that I needed to hide it from plain view if I wanted to have any chance of using it myself. The matter is only made worse by the fact that the chalkboards here are often just framed sections of concrete walls painted black, so the chalk will have literally crumbled into nothing by the time you have finished writing the word “onomatopoeia.”

In teachers’ college we were taught the importance of providing students with handouts and graphic organizers in order to maximize retention and enhance learning. This is the practice being used with Canadian students in high schools all over the country. Well here, where English is still very much a second (or third, or even fourth) language, and we are teaching Shakespeare’s sonnets and essays by Booker T. Washington, students don’t have the privilege of handouts. You see, the fact of the matter is we aren’t allowed to make photocopies. There is only one photocopier in the school and it resides inside the principal’s office. Photocopying handouts for an entire class-worth of students is out of the question. There is a cyclostyle machine (if you don’t know what this is, I urge you to look it up in the dictionary; you will find it quite amusing), but in order to make copies using this prehistoric machine you must provide at least a day’s notice, and bear the guilt of asking someone to turn a crank eighty times, so that your students can have a handout with ten questions written on it. This might seem feasible once in a while, and it is, but as a regular practice it is not at all realistic. As a result, the alternative is to simply read the questions aloud or to write them on the board. The problem with this is that it is incredibly time consuming. The reality is that there is barely enough time to actually teach the content we are expected to cover, so spending 10-15 minutes reading out a list of questions is not worth it. The result is that I rarely assign homework other than reading or maybe a writing topic.

My last example of the lack of resources is perhaps the best to illustrate just how frustrating and challenging teaching here can be. The evaluation for English class is fairly complicated. It is divided into two separate courses (which are being taught in one class), one of which focuses on reading and literature, and the other that focuses on language and grammar. For the first course, called English I, the evaluation is based on two exams worth 80% of the students mark, and on a reading and writing portfolio, each of which account for 10% of the student’s overall mark. The expectations laid out by the Ministry of Education are that the students read forty books a year. Forty books! I have openly admitted to each of my classes that I could not read forty books in a school year. The expectation that these teenagers who have a limited grasp of English, and for whom simple tasks take a considerable amount of time, is not just unrealistic, it’s completely absurd. But the unrealistic expectation is not even the point. The point is that even if my students were capable of reading twenty books each term, they don’t have access to that many books. There is a school library, but students are only allowed to visit the library once every two weeks (I’m not exactly sure why), and for some reason the librarian was not allowing them to borrow any of the school’s books; they were only allowed to read them inside the library. I talked to the librarian and arranged for my students to be allowed to visit the library during lunch one day and borrow a book each. Most of them did take advantage of this opportunity, but I think some of them were already feeling discouraged and didn’t bother. I still haven’t seen the inside of the library though I now know that it does exist in an extremely limited capacity.

One of the consequences of this lack of resources, in my opinion, is a glaring abundance of plagiarism and cheating. I was told that these issues have never really been addressed in the Bhutanese education system and that plagiarism in particular is deeply ingrained in student culture. To be honest, the issue never even crossed my mind until I collected the first essay I had assigned to class XI Com B. I was not particularly impressed by their work at first, not was I disappointed. The ideas were relatively sound and the grammar was as I had expected it to be. But my surprise came when I first read one essay that sounded identical to another that I had already marked. I quickly skimmed back through the essays I had already marked in order to find the essays partner only to discover that the two essays were - word for word – identical to one another. I wrote a quick comment at the bottom of each instructing the students to speak to me about my suspicions, recorded “copied” into my marking sheet, and continued to read on. By the time I had finished marking the entire stack of papers I had a separate pile of twelve essays that had been copied, once again word for word, from one another. I asked Deva Kumar, the head of the English department, what I should do, and he explained to me that there wasn’t much that I could do. You see, Jigme Sherubling – and I’m sure most schools in Bhutan for that matter – does not have a plagiarism policy in place.

So students cheat, right? No big deal. It happens everywhere. Well it doesn’t end there. No more than two weeks ago I was approached by one of my senior colleagues. I was sitting at my desk, which was once again buried under a stack of books and papers, when he asked me if I was busy. The answer was obvious, but the culture here dictates that when someone senior to you asks you to do something you do it. So I told him that I was marking and then asked him what he needed. He explained to me that his sister is studying at a neighbouring university, and is a very good student, but that she was feeling very overwhelmed at the moment and needed some help with an essay. At that moment I thought that he was going to ask me to help edit her essay, a favour I would have been happy (well maybe not happy) to do. But then he handed me a piece of paper with a essay topic written on it and some very broad, rough ideas scribbled down. “Globalization is an powerful force of good in the world. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the above statement.” I chose neither to agree, nor disagree. I didn’t want to even think about it. But after handing me the piece of paper he asked me if I could please write a few paragraphs on the topic.

At this point in time I told him I wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of writing this essay, as I am not just a native English speaker, but also an English teacher with two university degrees. In an attempt to meet him half way I offered to brainstorm some ideas for the essay and create an outline for the essay, but somehow – I’m not entirely sure how – he dismissed my ethical concerns and told me just to write some sentences with ideas linked together (this sounds like a paragraph to me).

I came home that night, opened my laptop and created what I considered to be an incredibly detailed outline. Next, I opened up a new word document and began typing an introduction. After one sentence my brain locked. I couldn’t write another word. The truth was that I didn’t want to write another university essay. I feel like I’m done writing essays. It’s now my turn to evaluate essays. On top of that, I couldn’t bring myself to write an essay for a university student that I knew would be evaluated and count towards her overall grade.

I was educated in a system that constantly reinforced academic integrity and honesty as core values. I talked to my mom that night, and she fully agreed with me and planted in my mind the perfect analogy. It was totally unfair for my colleague to expect me to write the essay, as it totally compromised my values, just as it would have been unfair for me to ask him to kill a chicken, as it would compromise his values as a practicing Buddhist. At that I saved my outline, closed my computer, and went to sleep.

The next day I very briefly explained to my colleague that I had created a detailed outline that I would give to him, and that I was happy to edit his sister’s essay once she had completed it, but that I wasn’t comfortable writing it for her. He didn’t seem to mind much (I should have mentioned that he is an incredibly nice man), and I left him with a load off my mind.

A few hours later, another teacher came into the staff room. I could very faintly hear him asking people about the term “NAFTA”, asking if anyone knew what it was. I, of course, knew exactly what it meant, not only because I am Canadian, but also because it was one of the supporting points I had included in my outline under the heading of economic benefits. It was obvious to me that the responsibility of writing the essay had been delegated to another teacher and that my colleague's sister would never write a single word. I quickly explained the basics of NAFTA to the desperate teacher and then washed my hands of entire situation.

The point is that it is not that people are maliciously engaging in plagiarism, but rather that they fail to see anything wrong in what they are doing. It is not even an ethical grey area for them; it’s just not in the spectrum. People just use and reuse words as if the purpose of their existence is to be recycled. A favour here and favour there are sometimes necessary in order for people to cope with the stress that life sometimes deals us. It’s funny because I actually think there is something charming about it. This is the land of Gross National Happiness, and the truth is that people are just trying to help each other and make each other happy. The reality, of course, is that we can’t always be happy and that the stress that accompanies our university studies is actually designed to teach us to manage our time efficiently and to cope with the stress that will most likely greet us when we enter the professional world.

I know that I have been feeling that stress as of late. Teaching has been nothing short of completely exhausting. Teachers’ duties here often begin at 6:30 a.m. and can extend to 8:30 p.m.. In case that doesn’t sound exhausting enough for you, consider that we work a six day week (occasionally seven), and that simply staying alive here takes a considerable amount of work, what with the manual laundry, the malnutrition, and the lack of sunlight and electricity. I’m definitely starting to feel run-down, but at the same time the two-week midterm break is only a little more than a month away, so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Needless to say, work has been quite an eye-opening experience. I knew that it would be a challenge before coming here, I just didn’t know how exactly. Again, I think it would have been an enormous challenge in the comforts of my own city, in my own province, in my own country. Being in a foreign country, immersed in a foreign culture, teaching in a foreign education system, has only amplified that challenge. I do think that I am benefiting greatly from this experience, both professionally and personally, and that I will emerge on the other side a better person and a better teacher.

I realize that after reading this people might think that I’m having a miserable time teaching here and that my life is filled with nothing but frustrations, but this couldn’t be further from reality; the truth is I’m loving it all. I can remember a time during my first semester of teachers’ college when I started to seriously doubt whether teaching was the profession for me. I pushed through, telling myself that teachers’ college isn’t teaching, it’s still school. How true that is. Both of my supervising teachers during my practice teaching told me that they thought I was a natural and that they were impressed with how quickly I was learning and adapting my teaching style. It was comforting to hear these words of encouragement, and I honestly felt as though I had developed professionally over those four months. Now I have my own classes and my own students. I am “Sir” or “Nick Sir” or “Mr. Nick” and it just feels right. Teaching is such a great profession, and although it is incredibly stressful and incredibly frustrating at times, it is also incredibly enjoyable, and when you make powerful connections with kids from a totally different culture in a country complete unlike your own and get to witness the positive impact you are having on their lives, it is maybe the most rewarding thing anyone can do.