It’s just amazing to me what unfolds when I can let go of making things in my life happen. My housemate here in Pokhara,Nepal asked if I wanted to be introduced to his hospitality teacher, Arun, who owns Standard Hotel & Language Training Institute. I am usually up for meeting new people, I am my father’s son after all. ???? After making a plan to attend one of his cooking classes, it was cancelled right at the last minute and instead I was invited to go meet him a restaurant on the north side of Phewa lake. My spider sense was tingling because he was not answering his phone after many attempts within an hour’s time right when I was supposed to meet him.
Something I’ve learned while here in India and Nepal is that there are a lot of people not good at keeping their word or having basic consideration for others time through good communication. I realize this is something that happens everywhere and not just India/Nepal, I’m just finding it more prevalent since I’m in my third month of travel. I’ve learned to specifically ask people to communicate with me when making arrangements should plans need to change and give others a second chance to make good on their word. I like to think that people generally mean well and are good natured.
After many attempts to communicate unsuccessfully and finally able to decide I went against my intuition to cancel and found my way to the north side of the lake to a restaurant where Aron was consulting. I only had a few minutes with him because he was working. Aron was more interested in consulting work then he was after 10 years of teaching which I can completely understand. I’m still not sure of the last-minute cancellation of the cooking class. I sat with a couple of men, one was Sanjay, a managing partner of Himalayan Java Coffee, a major coffee house franchise here in Nepal and another man, Sudip, who is an instructor at Novel Academy here in Pokhara. I had some great conversation with these other two men and we exchanged phone numbers to get together in the future.
I was asked if I would be interested in coming to the college to be a guest speaker in Sudip’s Operations Management classes. Of course, I could not resist to see what it was like in college here in Nepal. The boys sat on one side of the room and the girls sat on the other. There was one projector that could connect to someone’s laptop to project on the wall. No audio other than the speakers on the laptop. There was a wireless internet connection but only 10mbps speed which is good for here in Nepal.
What I experienced was that the students were used to instructors lecturing to them. What I call “chalk and talk” instructors. The classroom environments I experienced lacked activities, online course presence and instructors that were genuinely interested in how the students were grasping the material. I was able to engage the MBA students a little bit more than the first year Business Admin students. I was able to talk some about business operations from a hospitality standpoint and attempted to get them to ask questions with moderate success.
One of my favorite parts of teaching is getting underneath the material being covered and into the heart and minds of my students. Asking them exploratory questions which help them find the truth of what motivates them to follow their dreams, how to be happy, finding their passion in life and what will motivate them to get out of bed in the morning. I’m finding that the people in this part of the world are more interested in this topic than the students in America. The classroom was full of students talking softly to each other when I was talking about restaurant business operations… and when I started talking about this other stuff you could hear a pin drop in the room. You know truth when you hear it.
One of the students during their introduction said what he wanted to be when he grows up was “happy”. Another said he wanted to spend more time with their family. Another student asked for some advice in how to stay motivated when facing adverse conditions. What wonderful responses and inquiries that I had never heard before. This gave me some really fantastic material to guide me. When we were getting towards the end of the class time I found an opportunity to talk about happiness and the motivation we must cultivate to be happy when we aren’t able to locate it around us.
I proceeded to tell the class that our happiness and motivation is our individual responsibility and if we are looking for it somewhere outside of us we are looking in the wrong place. One of the ways I was saying to them to find our inner peace and happiness was to figure out what motivates us to get out of bed in the morning. What it is that we are called to do in service to humanity that draws out our truest and most unique personal gifts that nobody else can give to the world.
We were finishing the class with a conversation about what it means to be successful and I asked that question to the class. I got some great unexpected answers. I was expecting to hear a lot about financial profit as a determining factor for success. What I got were answers like achieving goals, inspiring people personal satisfaction, being happy and having a positive mental attitude. Wow! I was amazed at these first-year students seeing something beyond money as a determining gauge for success. I then invited them to look at this a little bit differently. Our success is determined by the success of the people who are employed by us and the success of the people whom we are doing business with. If we all are thriving in our personal lives and our professional lives, then we all are successful.
After these two classes I was able to meet the CEO of the academy. We spoke of the lack of student centered learning and I was asked if it was possible to give a workshop to the instructors to educate the faculty about student centered learning and the techniques involved. After I get back from my trek into the Annapurna Mountains I will follow up on this. Of course, I’m no expert on Student Centered Learning but I think there’s something I can do to help these people out engage their students a little bit better.
There was a last-minute invitation for me to speak at a welcome and graduation banquet for the academies nursing department. They were welcoming the new students and passing the flame from the graduates to the new students. I had some time and I couldn’t pass that up. It was a wonderful opportunity and I was concerned that I wasn’t prepared with anything to say. There were about 150 people there and I was the only American. I did the best that I could, and I didn’t feel good about it at all. The CEO said I did OK and I think he was being nice about it. I learned that I needed some time to prepare before making a commitment to speak in front of a crowd like that.
It’s a little strange not to be surrounded with x-mas music and all the consumerism associated with the holiday season. It makes me feel like it really isn’t December or the Christmas season.
I will be off the grid for 8 days as I make a trek into the Annapurna Mountains. You can google Poon Hill trek and Annapurna hot springs trek to find out more if you’d like to know where I’m going.
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