By Linus Haring

Volunteer job at Lha: English Teacher

My name is Linus and I’m 19 years old. Back in Germany, I knew barely a handful of things about Tibetan culture, but for some reason it really attracted me. That’s why right after graduating from high school, I applied for a ten month-long voluntary service in the middle of the Tibetan exile community. I had no idea what would expect me there, but I knew that I wanted to do something completely different from my sheltered childhood and teenage years in the German countryside.

Since October 2019, I’ve been staying at Tsecholing Monastery just below McLeod Ganj, teaching English to local little monks who are between 10 and 18 years old. To my satisfaction, this experience gave me some confidence about my teaching skills. That said, I also realised that I feel much more comfortable playing with children than teaching them, and therefore developed a preference for teaching adults. Consequently, when my little monks went into their winter holiday, starting in late December, I was glad to say “Yes” when an Austrian acquaintance of mine asked me to take over her English Beginner’s Class at Lha.
For about one month now, I’ve been teaching from 10.30 to 12 each morning – and it’s been a fabulous month! The guidelines provided by Lha turned out to be extremely useful, allowing me to teach beginner’s level English on a logical step-by-step basis. But the best thing might be that I really like my students, and I do believe that this feeling is mutual. I already knew before my work at Lha that I’m sort of in love with the Tibetan people – I’ve never met one I didn’t like – but my latest experiences made me feel this sympathy even deeper. Apart from that, Lha was also a place where I could meet a whole bunch of incredibly likeable, fellow westerners who are contributing a lot as volunteers.
I really hope that my regular schedule for the work I originally applied for will allow me to return to this institution after February, which has long been planned to be my holiday month. All in all I’m extremely glad that I trusted my guts in my choice of what to do in my first year after high school. It must have been fate that led me to this place, where an admirable culture with a wise religious leader leads a dignified, hopefully temporary life outside its homeland.