It's been a busy week, and a stormy one as well, with a few lengthy power cuts that kept me out of the internet cafes. With all Mcleodganj's computers frequently down, the only thing to do at times was to put my feet up on the windowsill of my guesthouse room and enjoy watching the spectacular lightening, thunder, and pounding rain. There's nothing like a good thunderstorm in the mountains! Yesterday and today marked a welcome change, however, with sunshine and warmth most of each day. And the trend towards good weather is likely to continue (I just learned this from the Mcleodganj Weathergeek, who was a US meteorologist for 8 years).

Despite the sometimes drenching rain, cold, and heavy clouds, which preempted my usual Sunday hillwalking, the week has been a real high so far because of the inspired work of my Intermediate English students. On both Monday and Tuesday, we started off class with high-energy 15-minute conversations. On Monday, I asked students to pair up and tell each other a story from their childhoods. On Tuesday, I asked them to talk about people who inspire them. On both days, the conversations started immediately and would have continued unabated had I not stopped them to return to (oh, joy!) discussion of the present perfect tenses. And yesterday, we read the story of Emperor Ashoka's transformation from tyrant to Buddhist after encountering a monk on a battlefield, and then had a very active discussion about it.

The big high point came yesterday afternoon, though, as I sat on the outdoor deck of the Kunga Guesthouse's cafe to review the first batch of written assignments that my students had just turned in for my class. I had asked them to write at least 2 or 3 sentences about a childhood memory. I quickly realized that each student had taken the assignment very seriously, and each had written a much longer story than required. Best of all, I learned that Tibetans are born storytellers! Every story was remarkably well told, despite understandably imperfect grammar. I have to wonder whether their skill has to do with having grown up in a world devoid of the modern distractions that can so fragment our attention these days.

The stories, taken together, created for me a window into a lovely and non-Western world. Several of the writers described their experiences when looking after their families' herds. They had typically been given that responsibility in childhood. Some described the natural beauty of their motherland (most spent their childhoods in Tibet). One commented on how wonderful it was that everything they needed was provided by Nature. Another described feeling frightened as a child by Westerners with their strange, light-colored hair, and encountering a group of them when out alone herding sheep. One student described riding her horse so far from home that her late return frightened her mother. Another writer described learning his (Tibetan) letters from his father in the evenings after a day of herding. One student described how he could not go to school for a few years because his family needed his help (at age 6!) herding the family's livestock.

Just after I'd come up to the classroom yesterday--the day that the writing assignments were due--the students had arrived en masse, with eyes and faces bright. I think that they had been sharing their stories with each other up on the office roof. Today as they gathered before class, they were quiet with anticipation: what would their teacher have to say about their carefully crafted stories? The first thing I did in the classroom was to write in large letters on the white board: "Thank you for your wonderful stories!!"

At the Kunga Guesthouse yesterday, I had reflected for a while on how best to respond to their impressive efforts. I had particularly wanted to do their work justice, being pretty sure that these stories were the most substantial pieces of English-language writing they'd produced. So I had lightly edited each story and also had written a short note to that writer to thank them for their story, to say what I'd especially liked about it, and to point out two or three areas to focus on in their future writing projects. (For example, use of articles like a, an, and the, which aren't used in Tibetan.) I handed both documents to each writer. That feedback seemed to be well-received. For the rest of the hour, we practiced with the several aspects of English grammar that were most challenging for the writers. I noticed that during this discussion, many of the students were speaking with less reticence and more assurance than before.