Seven Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed
This blog post contains a lot of photos and videos, please scroll all the way to the bottom to make sure you see them all!
April 24th
This is a unique week at the monastery as most of the boys are away at a mantra program in Salleri and the classes have not yet resumed since they just got back from their winter vacations. There are only about 20 boys here right now – the youngest ones who aren’t old enough to sit for the mantras and the most senior students who are needed at the monastery to run the pujas and be there if the community needs them. With no classes to teach this week I have spent some days in the nearby village Chulamu with my auntie Yandi, gone on hikes, had discussions about philosophy with Khenpo, and played lots of games with the little boys.
There is a group of 7 little ones who always follow me around so I have dubbed them my little ducklings. They are Ang Dawa, Temba, Gumpo, Pema Tashi, Mingmar Kaji, Namgyal, and Lama Tulku. Lama Tulku is the youngest, only 6 years old, and Ang Dawa the oldest at 13 years old. They all have very unique personalities and are all full of so much energy.
One of their favorite activities we do is play with bubbles. I brought some big bubble wands from the US and it has been so much fun and brought hours of entertainment. They go crazy chasing the bubbles and when they float too high they take off their shoes and throw them as high as they can to pop them. They are very into karate and kung fu (from watching Kung Fu Panda) and practice their flying kicks and karate chops on the bubbles. They also like to take turns blowing the bubbles but that leads to a lot of pushing and shoving. While they are monks, they are first and foremost little boys who often struggle with patience and taking turns. We have been practicing waiting in line, not punching each other, saying please, and going to the back of the line when their turn is over. There are days with success and some with a lot more struggle (and hitting).
They are all very tough and love hitting each other and wrestling. Sometimes when I look out my window I see them entertaining themselves by whacking each other with their jackets and running into each other at full force and tumbling to the ground. It took a bit to establish that while they may enjoy hitting each other, I don’t like to be hit. It was an interesting time explaining a new and important English word to them – boundaries.
One thing they are very into right now is superheroes. The favorite seems to be Spiderman but Superman comes in at a close second. They also love Sonic, Hulk, and Kung Fu Panda. On my favorite evening this week I was watching a beautiful sunset and they were all playing on the large boulders of the construction site jumping between them and running in circles. They’d shout “miss! miss!” and have me watch as they did their Superman jumps, ran around as fast as they could like Sonic, and pounded their chest and roared like Hulk.
We have had fun practicing English through reading some of the books I brought. Notable favorites so far are Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and Where the Wild Things Are. They have fully memorized Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed so when we read it they love screaming along at the top of their voice, “NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPING ON THE BED!!!”. When it comes to reading they are very good at spelling out the words but rarely can tell me what the words say. They have lots of practice copying the alphabet but little to no experience actually speaking.
I also brought big boxes of crayons and they love drawing. The main themes in their drawings are helicopters, airplanes, drones, aliens, bull dozers, rainbows, and mountains. Anytime they add something new to their drawing they want to show me and often I will get surrounded by a mob of excited boys jumping up and down waiting for me to look at their pictures. One time when I was bringing the crayons back to my room to put away they all followed chanting “Sienna! Sienna! Sienna!” and waited at my door until I came back out to keep playing.
Beyond being very tough, these little boys are fearless (or perhaps don’t even understand the concept of risk). The other day they nearly gave me a heart attack riding around on each other's shoulders! This would have been fine if bigger ones had small ones on their shoulders but it was two sets of tiny ones stacked on top of each other and running around! At one point the Namgyal/Pema Tashi stack ran into me and Pema Teshi started climbing on my shoulders and hanging upside down like a monkey! Later they all somehow found long sticks that became swords. They did massive flying jumps and big spins with their sticks whipping around at terrifying speeds. Everyday I am surprised that they aren’t all seriously concussed, wearing eyepatches, or bleeding. In all the time of leaping off boulders, running into walls, tackling each other to the ground, bonking heads, kicking, punching, and slapping I have not yet seen anyone cry or get injured. There was one close call where one boy took something from another's hands and the other one grabbed a rock the size of his fist and was seconds away from throwing it full force at his head before I intervened.
April 26th
Now, all the boys have come back to the monastery and the chaos has been amped up quite a few notches. I am very interested to see if we will keep our injury-free streak going. I will keep doing the best I can to prevent rocks being thrown at heads, overly dangerous jumps, and to encourage greater personal space when flinging sticks around.
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