By Kyra Heeg
In Germany, I was studying to become a special needs teacher. When I was on vacation in south India at the end of March, I fell in love with the country and that’s why I didn’t hesitate to say “yes” when a friend from my university asked me if I would be interested in volunteering in India. Actually I have never been to North India or had volunteered at a Tibetan organisation, so I was very excited and a little bit afraid of what to expect from the work as a volunteer.

But even before we arrived, the communication between the organisation and us was easy and Tsering, the volunteer coordinator, replied directly and answered all our questions.

This made us feel very secure about our trip. They also booked a room for us at the related Ahimsa house. On the day we arrived in Mcleod Ganj, Tsering picked us up at Lha and showed us our guest house. We directly felt like home, because all the people working at Lha are really friendly and kind. By the way, I want to mention that all the staff are doing an amazing job and they have all my respect for doing it.

So I started teaching the German class and on my first day, I was very nervous. But even here, the members of Lha just helped me and that really relaxed me. At first, I only had one student in my class, but with the time more and more joined. Teaching German in this context was a very nice experience, because talking to the students and getting to know them and their reasons for learning this language strengthened my feeling of me helping and doing the right thing. All my students were truly interested in learning, so teaching them was very fun and easy. Compared to students in Germany, where you sometimes have to really motivate your students, the students in Lha are very inquisitive.
Besides the German class, I took part in the conversation class. From 4 to 5 pm the students and volunteers meet at Lha to talk in little groups. Here I got a deeper look into the lives of the students and learned a lot about Tibet and their history. Sometimes we had a serious and deep topic, sometimes we played funny games or shared droll stories.
Volunteering at Lha was very meaningful and I learned a lot, also about myself. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my life so far and I’ll definitely come back. I can only recommend volunteering at this outstanding organisation and being a part of something so great.