Week One

Just completed the first week of the course. We have a very nice Tibetan lady as our teacher and a class of 13 people. The class includes 3 western monks, one western nun and includes students from Finland, USA, Korea, France, Israel, Brazil and Indonesia. We are all together from 9 to 11:30 for a formal class and then break up into pairs and spend 2 hours with a conversation partner. So far, it has mainly been pronunciation and some simple words. Tibetan pronunciation is a bit frustrating. It looks fairly simply at first glance, but they have distinctions between sounds that most of us are pretty much unable to hear. The mp3 recorder I decided to invest in has already come in handy in getting these sounds a little more correct, though there is no substitute for practice, practice and then some more of the same. Encouragingly, most of us notice at least a little improvement in our 'ear' where previously indistinguishable sounds almost magically sound 'different' as time goes on. Long may this continue, but either way, at the moment I am still having a lot of fun.

I have decided to share my 2 room apartment with a Korean American student, who was having trouble finding a suitable room to rent. We'll pool our resources a little both practically and perhaps with Tibetan practice and hopefully we should make some gains. Of course, there is a little less privacy, but I like to practice being adaptable - good for the mind - and I don't think that this will be too much of a challenge. If it is, then he (or me) are out the door!