Day 3 Friday: First Full day

One of things you don’t understand when you watch the wonderful videos of monasteries on Discovery channel is the impact of those gongs and bells. The depth they go through to in your soul when its 5:00 AM can only be experienced. That is how the morning started for us at the Monastery. Monks do Tibetan studies starting at 5:00 AM and they wake everyone up with loud gongs. I had been getting up at 5:00ish but I woke up today at EXACTLY 5:00AM. My son, however, didn’t quite have the same reaction as me as me and, suffice it to say, after some grumbling agreed to wear ear-plugs from that point on.
Morning prayers follow at 6:00 AM and I was ready for them. The Morning Prayer is somewhat similar to the evening prayer but just has even more energy and decorum. I tried to practice meditation for the hour and was able to do one segment for 13 minutes at a stretch which pleased me. Lothar, however, could continue for 35minutes which gave me a goal.
Breakfast follows Morning Prayers and this morning it included some rice, a soupy mix and the previous night’s flour balls. Monks do all the serving, cleaning and we are treated as guests and offered food first. After breakfast we rinsed the utensils and put them away.
We got ready for our first teaching opportunity of youngest of the monks – level 1. This class had 4 monks and three were sick. Aakash, Sandra and I taught the words for relationships such as grand-father, grand-daughter etc. followed by fill-in-the-blanks where they were shown cards with an item and the spelling with missing letters which they had to fill-in. Class went very well and again it helped to know Hindi since most of these monks were also avid Hindi movie watchers and thus knew the language.
11:30 is lunch and so we had the usual fare of rice, vegetables which is now becoming a habit.
We also participated in the 1:00 PM level-2 class.
These young monks are interesting. On one-hand, they take on immense schedules and daily rigors that would cause even an adult to buckle and on the other, they play pranks on each other and are physical as any other group of boys. Both classes involved kids hiding things or playing with us just as much as studies.
We skipped the second class since more volunteers were present and went for a walk. Aakash decided to go running instead which was great.
Tea was at 3:30 as usual and I brought some cookies for the monks to have with their tea which was very well received.
6:00 PM was dinner and we had our usual meal. Main ingredient with rice was lentil dal and I skipped that and was allowed a bowl of potato sabji.
We all gathered around the office which was where you could get maximum bandwidth and after few minutes of checking emails and Facebook, power went off yet again. As we headed back, a senior monk, came to tell us that a teacher was available and waiting right then.
Earlier in the day, I had requested if we could get some time with a senior monk to answer some of the questions that I had and other volunteers had. We had been told that our request will be carried to teachers but that they were busy and likely available in couple of days. Having one available today was a surprise. We all gathered the bunch of us and spent the next hour or more looking at each of the many hand-painted murals with flashlight. If anything, being able to focus on each picture one at a time made for a great experience. We said our thanks and then retired for the night.
Saturday and Sunday are off for the monks and so we were free. We made some rudimentary plans with the others and settled in for the night.