Yuriy Budenko

Name: Yuriy Budenko
Country: Spain
Program: Teaching in Monastery

1. What did your average day look like?
Get up at 6:30am, Breakfast at 7:00. Moring Puja or preparing to lesson. Lunch at 11:30am. Dinner at 6pm. Free time. Gates closed at 8pm.

2. Other things I did on my placement.
Clean up room. Playing with children. Attending Puja. Tracking around.

3. What are some of the issues or challenges you faced?
No real challenges were met.

4. Advice to next volunteer going to your placement?
Be prepared that main meals is rice and spice vegetables.

5. Would you volunteer at this placement again?
Yeas, it’s possible.

6. Would you volunteer at this organization again?
Yes, I would like.

7. Suggestion or problem?
I don’t know how to do it, but it would be great to organize some knowledge transfer between volunteers. In order that new volunteers know what was done before.

8. Please write a Journal-type entry of experience now.
I was tired from my current job in Ukraine. I feel like my work is useless. So I wanted to get new experience and try something real. My wife suggested trying volunteering. We found in the internet a site with volunteering programs and decided to apply program about teaching English monks in Nepal monastery. We arrived in Nepal and were settled in a monastery where we spent four weeks.
It was a life like I never had before.
It was challenging to transfer to give knowledge to a little children, especially without speaking native language. It was a great experience for me to learn children’s behavior, interact with them, play with them, get their attention.