Living with a Tibetan Family
One of my main goals coming to Nepal was to learn Tibetan, both classical and modern colloquial Tibetan. Given my experience learning Japanese starting as an exchange student in high school (a very long time ago...) I knew it was important to live with a host family again. I started with the summer 2009 intensive course in beginning colloquial Tibetan. This two month course covers an entire year of Tibetan language. It was a real challenge, but living with a host family gave me extra opportunity to practice. It was mostly just me and my host brother, Kunga (my host mother went to Tibet for five weeks), but I'm certain I wouldn't have learned so much in such a short time with out a native speaker to talk with every evening. I then moved in with Drolkar and her son Tenzin for the 2009 - 2010 academic year. Drolkar is from Lhasa and has been a language partner with the institute for several years, so she was a great help throughout my stay with them. Her son