I will miss them! Nikol

And there we go: it’s over. It all went by faster than we thought it would, probably because we always had a lot to do. Besides teaching, we tried to improve the sun school a wee bit, including its surroundings, and the nice little store room also came out quite well. I am really, really pleased with the preschool kids and the first-graders and with the tremendous progress, obvious and discernible at first site that they made in all directions throughout our stay. The older kids have also jumped forward a good deal with their skills and knowledge, but with “the little ones“ one can see it most clearly. It was an incredibly interesting experience with people who live in unimaginably difficult conditions of the beautiful Himalaya; with people, who calmly live through all the trials and tribulations of their hard lives; with people, for whom promises, contracts and things agreed on unfortunately have less weight than a fly’s wing; with people, who, like everyone, love to laugh and have fun; with people, who only very rarely let anything stress them out. Life here is lived at a slower pace, nobody is in a hurry, nobody is rushing anywhere; ...

you wouldn’t find a clock in many of the houses and days are delimited by sunrises and sunsets. Children here are unspoilt, so far untouched by computer games, by watching TV and browsing the web. All children, regardless of age, love books, they love to sing, dance, draw, paint, build things – in other words, to create their own entertaining and funny games, sometimes also really tricky ones. Children here are grateful for any care and attention that you give them and are more ingenuous than children in Europe. Of course they can be horribly unruly and rowdy, but in spite of that they are, in the end, quite manageable and always fun to be around. I will miss them. I will miss, first of all, their smiles, which are on their faces as they come to school, easily an hour before classes start, so that they can thumb through books, undisturbed and for the requisitely long period of time, and then often get lost in passionate conversations led over almost unidentifiable drawings. I will miss their daily mischief and monkey business, Rinchen’s ringing laughter, Desal’s inquisitive questions, Dawoth’s adorable smile, Bhutik’s tongue-in-cheek smiles, little Jodlen’s winking eyes. I will miss them all. I really with them to stay cheerful, happy, healthy, content and to get an education that will allow them to do what they really like doing.

Nikol

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