When I started my BA years ago, I thought this time would never come and four years felt like a lifetime. However, now I feel like it was only yesterday I arrived in Kathmandu, and I almost wish I could do the whole thing again. It was so nice to come to Nepal and know absolutely nothing about Nepal! At that time I did not even know that buff momos are better than vegetable momos, and I still enjoyed the Nepali traffic because it was “fun” compared to the traffic back home:) The only bad thing I can say about the early days was that I didn’t realize how amazing an opportunity it is to get to study Tibetan, Philosophy, and so forth in such an amazing monastery, and therefore I was quite lazy. I could have learned the basics of Tibetan and academic paper writing much earlier if I had been smarter back then. In spite of that however, I was so happy that I decided to stay in Nepal and continue to study. I am eternally grateful to Rinpoche, and to all the staff at RYI who have made it possible for me, and all of the other students to stay in Nepal and study here, to learn Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Nepali, to learn about Buddhist philosophy and history and so forth. Actually, it would be impossible to describe how much fun I’ve had here!  

~ Rebecca Sunden