15. november

At breakfast I met an American couple, Lesley and Charlie. He is a journalist and is here to write about the glaciers in the mountains, which are melting because of global warming. It is bad news for Bhutan because they make energy from the rivers coming from the mountains and sell it to other countries to make money for Bhutan in that way. If there is no glacier there will be no river, no energy and no money. The country will have to find other ways of getting an income then. The couple is very kind and since they are staying at this hotel I guess I'll see them again.

Today Lasse, Carsten and I visited a private art school called Choki for poor children. The school was run by an old monk who started it a couple of years ago. Today they have 113 children and 5 trainers. The children come from all over Bhutan and they live at the school while they learn their skills. They all come from very poor backgrounds and most of the expenses in connection with the school and their stay are paid by sponsors. The cost for one child for one year is about 4000 Kr. (535 Euros) and the family pays only 65 kr. a year (9 Euros).

We saw some very kind children who were all doing their very best to learn the difficult skills of wood carving, embroidery, drawing, painting and weaving. They were working in small rooms without heating and one little boy sat there with bare legs and sandals! Others were sitting on the floor. But they were all happy to talk to us and show us what they were doing. When they finish school they will work as artists and will be able to start their own business or work for a company and they will make a reasonable amount of money to live on.

The old monk and one of his trainers showed us around and offered us tea before leaving. We also shared a little prayer in front of Buddha as a goodbye.

In the afternoon Lasse and Carsten were to sign a contract so I was on my own and went together with Kinley, a girl from the Ministry, to talk to the trainers at Thimphu Institute of Automobile Engineering and an art school in Thimphu. All the trainers I talked to gave me the same answer to my question: "If you could choose one thing to learn as a trainer what would it be? What is the biggest problem for a trainer here today?" The answer was: "Get some practical experience!" It turned out that many of them are educated at the same schools where they are now teaching - they have never been on the labour marked to work. Of course they find it difficult to train the trainees. Especially the trainers at the automobile institute had a difficult time and thought training was a big challenge. They would like to get some more training in almost everything I mentioned including psychology, communication, presentation techniques and teaching and learning methods. I'll have lots of work to do J

Tonight the electricity kept disappearing. They say it is because the system gets overloaded. Good thing I brought a flashlight!