Today I woke up and realized with sadness that it is our last day here. The TCV, a quiet oasis in the chaos of India, has quickly become our home and our students have become our friends. Even though it’s a Sunday and we have to leave at 8 AM, the students still arrived to say final goodbyes. We were presented with hugs, more Katas and banana bread from Lhakpa’s parents.

Saying goodbye is harder than I imagined. The students wanted to know the time difference between India and Seattle so they would know when to check their email to find out that we made it home okay. They made us promise never to forget them. That’s a promise I know I will never break.

Before heading back to the airport, we detoured briefly to the Norbulingka Institute. This is a center dedicated to preserving Tibetan arts and culture. It gave us all a chance to wander through the tranquil grounds, temple Dorma Ling nunnery and watch the artisans at work, while we quietly reflected on our experiences over the past two weeks.

We discussed how meeting, bonding with these students and listening to their stories has been a life changing experience. Through their voices and stories we’ve learned so much about Tibet and its culture, and ultimately about ourselves too. I appreciate Getty Images for awarding me this opportunity and feel privileged to have met such amazing students and have witnessed the success of the Bridges to Understanding program. As the board president for another Seattle-based non-profit with a similar mission – Youth in Focus – this experience has energized me further in supporting and evangelizing important programs such as these.

Somewhat fittingly with our sad mood, it began to rain for the first time on our trip as we said our goodbyes to the other mentors and staff.

On the plane home, my husband Chris and I didn’t waste anytime and started to plan our return visit.

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Today is the 48th anniversary of TCV, and the Dalai Lama is the guest of honor. All of the Bridges to Understanding mentors and staff were invited to attend as VIPs.

Over 5,000 people attended the event and the campus was packed. Luckily we arrived early and settled into our front row seats in plenty of time. The crowds of monks, nuns and students in traditional costumes and school uniforms got louder and louder as his car drove into the arena.

The Dalai Lama nimbly ascended the staircase right in front of us. I was very overwhelmed but my husband Chris amiably said “hello” to him. The Dalai Lama grinned and returned the greeting!

The cultural program consisted of a parade, marching bands, dancers and (the highlight for us) the middle school performing a calisthenics display of which they have been practicing for hours and hours over the past few weeks.

We looked for our 12 Bridges to Understanding students as they created amazing formations, including spelling out Tibet Will Never Die, Inner Peace and World Peace:

The morning finished with a politically charged speech by the Dalai Lama in Tibetan. However, as my Tibetan is a little rusty (or actually non-existent since I don’t speak Tibetan) , Choeppel, one of the teachers, gave us a rough translation.

After lunch of traditional food and Tibetan butter tea (salty and undrinkable in my very British opinion) we were lucky enough to spot another VIP up close – The Karmapa.

We meet back up with our kids who are extremely excited to think we spotted them in their performance and I am reminded once again of their absent parents.

We decided as a group to ditch the three hour (fairly obscure) performance of the Tibetan opera and headed out for our last afternoon with the kids. They don’t get outside of their school walls more than once a month or so, so this was considered a huge treat.

They decided they wanted to go to Bhagsu so we started the long trek. We spotted many black faced langurs along the way and at one point ended up running from a bull near the church cemetery.

Some students and mentors went up to the waterfall we visited yesterday. Lhakpa, the constant guide, took us to a local Hindu temple. We had seen a few Hindu temples in Delhi but nothing like this. It was completely bonkers, starting with an entry through a lion’s mouth. Then you had to crawl on your knees through dark tunnels before reaching a shrine. This was all gleefully described by Lhakpa as the “Disneyland of religion.”

While we waited for the others near the temple pool, we finally discovered what a monk really wears under his robes:

I made a comment on the walk back into town that the kids must be getting tired after their performance and now a long hike. Menhla Tsomo replied back quietly, “Yes, it’s a long way. But not as long as our walk from Tibet.” I didn’t know what to say.

The mood picked up again when we reached the restaurant. We let the kids know we were treating and they ordered enough food for a small army! The evening was made even more special with the kids started making speeches to all of us, thanking us for the experience. Always fighting for the spotlight, Tenzin Seldon and Lekphel kept us entertained. At one point I thought Lekphel was going to thank the academy!

I looked around and the entire restaurant was watching us. I suddenly realized that the Bridges program had been a success and these kids had truly found their voices.

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This morning is our last working session. We have not been too worried as we only have a bit of finessing to do on our Bridges to Understanding digital story. However, after yet another poorly timed power outage, things start to get stressful! The ambient sound of dogs barking combined with the new transitions do something horribly wrong to our story. We had to spend several frustrating hours trying all variations of sounds until we finally tested it out on another computer. It is perfect now!  As the kids have been saying: “What do computers teach us? Patience.”  We happily turn in our files and take a much deserved break.

It turned out that Lhakpa forgot his uniform, which he needs for the evening’s film festival event. So we took the opportunity to hop on a tuk tuk down to McCloud Ganj so he could pick it up. He is one of the three students that actually has family nearby.

En route we stopped off at the oldest English church in India – St. John’s In The Wilderness. Lhakpa told us ghost stories as we gave ourselves a private tour, viewing the gravestones of residents that had died in a manner of explicit ways.

Further down the hill we met his parents who run a local restaurant. While we waited for Lhakpa to grab his uniform we watched the local wildlife run amok.

We still have several hours before the festival starts so Lhakpa offers to be our guide to a waterfall in Bhagsu, a town a few miles away. Lhakpa is now clad in uniform and totally unsuitable shoes for the long, uphill hike with loose stones on the path.

The hike was worth it. It’s extremely tranquil but freezing so I decline a dip. We returned by tuk tuk to the TCV where final preparations for the Dalai Lama’s visit tomorrow are in full swing.

The main school auditorium was the site for our film festival which was attended by over 500 students including the entire middle school. Needless to say, our students were very nervous! Each student introduced a digital story shyly but with great pride. Every story was greeted by a huge round of applause and some even received laughter. The “world premiere” was deemed a huge success by students, staff and mentors alike! What do you think of our video?

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Today we are completing the final edit of our project. I have spent most of my morning working in the Peace Center on the computer with the girls Dadon and Phunima. I have been helping them edit the narrative and we started the photo editing process. They picked up the editing program really quickly and we flew through it. Meanwhile, Chris was working with the boys to finalize the last few photos and create image credits.

After lunch, Lhapka and Chundak took turns editing the second half of the images while the girls got artistic and created title slides.

We were interrupted by a group of Norwegians who donated funds to build the Peace Center we were working in. The students suddenly became very shy around these new strangers and I realized then how far we have all come since the day we met (was that only 6 days ago?!). We are all now more than volunteers and students – we are friends.

By the end of the day, we only needed to create some transitions and layer in some ambient sounds. We are very tired from all of our hard work but also in a very good place to be ready for tomorrow night’s film festival!

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The local dogs barked all night (again) but Chris still got up at dawn to watch the students practice for the big anniversary of TCV celebration coming up on Saturday.

I woke up two hours later and joined everyone for our usual breakfast of Tibetan white bread and milky chai tea. This is going to be a big day and I am now over halfway through my Getty Images‘ trip with Bridges to Understanding and we still have a lot of work to do to create our digital story.

Luckily, “Team Compassion” works quickly! We finalized the narrative with Lhakpa and he recorded it in just a couple of takes. I had given the team some homework to do – they had to write out how they would put compassion into action. We video taped each student speaking in turn and wrapped up our audio. Check it out!

Picture by Chungdak

Image by Phunima

Chris worked with the students to complete the shot list and shoot any gaps we were missing, including their portraits. Lhapka loves taking conceptual photos and he has earned the nickname “Mr. Implicit.”

Picture by Chungdak

Picture by Tenzin Dadon

We finished our work for the day, pleased with the progress we had made, and headed into town to do some shopping behind some unconventional traffic.

I bought a Tibetan singing bowl and a black and white woven bracelet that Chungdak has told me is called a “Chime Giltoo” (Tibetan for immortal with nine eyes). These are made by Tibetan political prisoners as a symbol to remember their plight. I buy them in bulk.

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Today is my birthday. I haven’t been expecting anything special and the day started out somewhat badly as I woke up to a power outage. This meant no shower.

The lack of power also meant no computers so we had to quickly change the game plan. Instead of working on our projects we went over to the cultural center. We looked at the displays on every aspect of Tibet which were mostly created by students. Subjects included religion, geography, history and culture. The kids grabbed our hands and pulled us from display to another singing to us Tibetan songs as they proudly share their culture with us.

We then went to visit classroom 7D, Choeppel’s class and met our students’ classmates. To my great surprise, they greeted me with a rousing chorus of “London Bridge is Falling Down” in honor of my birthday. I’m the lone Brit here and the students took full advantage of grilling me on the finer aspects of European football.

Later that afternoon, we finally got a back-up generator working and were soon asked to return to the Peace Center for an important meeting.

Again, I was completely blindsided by the students, teachers and Bridges crew singing “Happy Birthday” to me in Tibetan: Tashi Dalek! They had secretly planned a Tibetan birthday party for me, complete with a huge cake and traditional butter lamp (instead of blowing out candles here, you light the butter lamp to make a wish).

But wait, there’s more! Everyone lined up and ceremoniously gave me a white Kata – a silk greeting scarf that Tibetans use to honor Lamas and, apparently, birthdays! All of the students gave me letters and a few also gave me small gifts of hairbands and notebooks. It was all very overwhelming. I tried, unsuccessfully, not to tear up.

Somehow I managed to cut the cake, without getting all of the katas in it, and we all enjoyed a large piece before the students left for the evening.

After a quick dinner, “our” monk Kunkhen, joined us again and entertained us for over an hour with stories from his work in NYC at the Tibet House, and his thoughts on a local boy, the Dalai Lama decreed “Monk Incarnate,” which he said “is 6 and rather stupid.” He ended the conversation by letting us know that he was rather well-known for his multi-phonic throat chanting, and he asked if we wanted to hear it. He started with a low throbbing chant, not dissimiliar to the sound of a didgeridoo. It is amazing to hear it up close!

After this rather bizarre, but fun turn, I definitely fancied a beer to end the day. We walked into town and into the first bar we could find (apparently this turned out to be the favorite local spot for Pierce Brosnan) and drank some of the largest and strangest beer I have ever tasted.

Over a glass of Thunderbolt (!) I looked back on my day. This has been one of the most emotional, absolutely amazing and also, the most sober birthdays I have ever had. Maybe my butter lamp wish will come true – to spend my next birthday back here in Dharamsala.

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Today is the first day of our big photo shoot! We met the students after an early breakfast and went down to Mcloud Ganj to see if our compassionate nun was home. We knew we were in the right place because we were greeted by an abundance of dogs but no one else was home. When the dogs started to growl and circle us, we quickly exited the area.

Picture by Tenzin Lhakpa

Because the nun is central to our story, we are a little lost on what to do next. First we decided to find out why she is not at home and she had a good reason. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama is back in town after being hospitalized. The whole town is going to greet him, including our nun. We decided to follow the steady stream of nuns, monks and backpackers to the main street by the temple.

While we were waiting, the students practiced their photography techniques, including portraiture, framing, capturing the “sweet light” – a popular Josh-ism – and even asking nuns and monks to pose as a back up if our other nun didn’t appear later.

After an hour wait, His Holiness arrived in a motorcade and we got a fleeting glimpse of him. One of our students even got this snap (look in the front seat):

Photo by Phunima

Then, we visited the temple where His Holiness lives before heading back to complete our task for the day.

Yep, back to photographing the dog lady.

As the students (and myself if I’m being completely honest) are still nervous from our previous, angry dog encounter at the house, Lori – one of the Bridges to Understanding staff comes with us. She quickly earns a new nickname – The Dog Whisperer.

This time at the house we call out in unison (and in Tibetan) to the nun, Sonam Tsering, to come out of the house. She suddenly emerges in a mass of barking dogs and climbs up the dark, narrow steps to meet us. The kids jump into action (except Lhakpa who is busy hiding behind me) and a very chaotic paparazzi moment begins. With bulbs flashing and dogs barking and the children yelling in Tibetan.

It gets dark quickly and we have to leave. After cajoling a reluctant Lhakpa into a quick shot with the nun:

Photo by Tenzin Dadon

Chungdak finishes recording the dogs for some ambient noise for our digital story. We shout our goodbyes leaving the nun alone among the barking mass once more.

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