14 Jan

I woke up later as it took ages to get to sleep last night, due to a dog barking for what seemed like an hour. I got my things ready and went to the same café as yesterday for breakfast. There I finished proof-reading my latest story 'Silent Footsteps' and went to the internet to post the last two days of my blog and publish the story. Just as I was finishing there, I got a call from Choephel (pronounced like Choople) then he hung up. I guessed this meant he was now here so I went to the hotel and he was. We got a taxi down to the school, which is a few km south of Dharamsala. There I met Ken, who's been here since October and Kendal and Maggie, who had also arrived today from Colorado. They are all retired teachers and nice people. We sorted out the bedrooms and I got the one in the house (the others are in the garden). I thought mine would be better but Ken warned me about the dogs barking at night... Uh oh... Ken showed us around the local area – where the shops are, where we go for a shower (a natural spring up the road with warm water) and we also visited Norbulingka Institute which was designed by a Japanese architect and has a Buddhist temple and beautiful gardens. It will be a place to visit on a sunny afternoon with a book. We also met Janet who teaches but lives elsewhere and her partner, who is Spanish and was very happy to meet me as he speaks very little English.

There are a few little shops nearby and the local people seemed friendly and happy to say hello to us. We won't have any problem with buying things that we need here and of course, it's cheap.

We went back to the school and immediately I got started on fixing the place up. Maggie's metal door wouldn't close properly as it scraped along the wall so with Choephel, we hammered the door and chiselled off some plaster and it now closes quite well. :) I got my room sorted out then we all ate. The students cook the food but there were only four there as the others were still away for the weekend after receiving lessons from the Dalai Lama for the last two weeks. We had noodle soup and Tibetan bread, which was nice. We four teachers chatted a bit and I think we'll get on well. Tomorrow, we'll all go into McLeod Ganj as the Americans haven't seen it yet and on Monday, we'll start figuring out how we will do the teaching then start properly on Tuesday.

With the internet, we have a dongle here that we share so I will not use it often. Maybe a couple of times a week to post on the blog and read emails.

There's a nice atmosphere here but it's quite cold at night; pleasantly warm as we walked around earlier but I've got my coat and hat on now, at 10.30pm. I will put my gloves on when I finish this! I hope those dogs don't bark...