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Dinner Time

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12 July 2017 Tingmo: traditional Tibetan steamed bread The meals while I have been at the school are fairly predictable – possibly due to the weekly menu pasted up in the kitchen!   2 students each day are allocated to “kitchen duty” with the weekend roster and timing going a bit haywire.  While not totally obliged to follow the weekly menu, students are limited by the available ingredients and their own abilities.  Breakfast for standard weekdays includes tingmo, the steamed Tibetan bread which includes yeast and baking powder; these can range from light and fluffy, almost like Nana’s scones, to “stone tingmo” when, for whatever reason, they do not rise.    A nice surprise for Sunday breakfast Sunday breakfast Twice a week the tingmo are accompanied by eggs:   hard boiled with a ration of 2 per person (and Indian eggs are often rather tiny) or scrambled, which might be flavoured with fried onion and tomato, or might not.   One
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Conversations, cultural perceptions and other snippets

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9th July As my time here draws to a close, I present a compiled a cut and paste of assorted conversations, observations and other odds and ends from the past weeks: Washing the dishes in the "stream" Selective general knowledge I am blown away by Dorjee’s knowledge; one morning over breakfast he’s flicking through the photos on my phone and asks about one which I identify as Meteora in Greece and tell him about it – but he knows already about Meteora!   I guess, in many ways the histories are parallel.   Persecution, escape and rebuilding a culture. Doing the laundry As I do some of my laundry after breakfast (using a bucket of soapy water by the “stream”) one of girls asks me if this is how we do washing in my country! (note, this is the same stream in which we have just washed our breakfast dishes and by which there is often a vehicle driver washing his motorbike, car, jeep, van, bus or truck)   The water supply for the school comes in 3 grades:   th
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Graduation and the Dalai Lama’s Birthday

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6 th July VERY special lunch While the concept of having a graduation party before the final exam is an interesting one, there are some things that maybe should not be questioned too closely.   I guess the students have already had their graduation picnic and there was a good reason for the timing of that…. Apart from having been told the date of the graduation, I as rather unsure about what was to happen.   I had been told that it would be organized by the local manager and directors, but if anything had been planned, I was not told about it.   I asked the students and all they said was that there would be special food – which, it turned out, they would cook!   There has been nothing organized by the manager or the directors. On the afternoon of the day prior to the party, students were preparing the dining area – signs, balloons with names and nicknames and the reinstatement of lights (with disco bulbs) and the tarpaulins to prevent some of the drips through the roof
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