Rating: 
Summary: One of my favorite books!
Review: I purchased this book without knowing what it was going to be about, and it turned out to be one of the best books I've read. Since I know nothing about Bhutan, I found the author's descriptions fascinating and imaginative. Without knowing anything about the culture or the area, I found that I could picture both the landscape and the people of Bhutan. It is more of a personal story about a young woman's travel into an unfamiliar area and the challenges she faces along the way, in terms of her own cultural background, values, and beliefs, than a story about the Bhutan itself. A friend of mine was in the Peace Corp and until about a year ago lived on a remote island in Micronesia. While I wrote to her often, it was hard for me to really understand what it would be like to live in a culture so different from one's own. Her correspondence revealed changing attitudes about the culture she was now a part of, her own cultural background, and the way she viewed herself. While reading this book, I felt I could better understand the feelings and attitudes my friend wrote to me about from Micronesia. I think this book would be very helpful for anyone with friends or family living or working in similar situations. I would think it would also interest people who are living overseas submersed in another culture. As someone who has never lived or spent a great deal of time outside the United States, I felt that I could identify with the author. I appreciated her honesty and ability to convey her feelings and emotions, as well as effectively describe a place totally unfamiliar to me. I would suggest it to anyone!
Rating: 
Summary: If you're interested in Bhutan, you'll enjoy this book
Review: This is a well-written, interesting book about the author's stay in Bhutan. If you are curious about this tiny nation and want to travel there someday as I do, you'll enjoy the book. However, the author herself doesn't come out very well. She seems shallow and self-centered; one of those people who feel their own desires and thoughts are more important than anyone else's desires or thoughts in any situation. She seems to think that she can atone for gross insensitivity on the one hand and extremely unethical behavior on the other hand, by some token breast-beating. It reminds me of the book "Three Came Back," which was fascinating although I was certain that if I actually met the author, I wouldn't like her. By the way, Jamie Zeppa's book about Bhutan is a good one to read after reading "The Jesuit and the Dragon : The Life of Father William Mackey in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan" since she taught at the college he organized. Gives a sense of continuous modern history.
Rating:
Summary: A Magical Escape
Review: Perhaps I am influenced by a period of childhood spent in the Himalayas, but this book took me out of a life that is filled with stress and the feeling of never having done enough. Jamie Zeppa showed such love and appreciation for a culture so different to her own, and had the courage to go alone into this new world, where she had the sensitivity to understand rather than to criticize. she brought this world to me, and having been an immigrant myself I know how hard a new culture is. More people in this country should read it and understand about a different culture and the delight it can inspire.
Rating:
Summary: A journey for any reader prepared to enter remarkable world
Review: This is a beautiful book that is at once funny, sad, informative and always honest. This book is truly a "journey into Bhutan" for both writer and reader. Zeppa's recounts her early experiences in Bhutan and the proccess of adapting to a vastly different foreign culture in a way that is both humourous and rings true. Her love story with Bhutan's landscape and its people is obvious, and her language carries the reader every step of the way. Zeppa's subsequent realization of her idealized perspective and understanding of the country's true complexity is a theme to which any overseas adventurer can relate. The book ends a bit abruptly, but overall a moving and wonderful read.
Rating: 
Summary: A personal experience in a remote place
Review: This book is a remarkable tale of one person's courage to make a hard decision about dropping a conventional western life for a remote teaching position, and then having the fortitude to stick with it during the first couple of miserable months, despite coming very close a couple of times to giving it all up and returning to Canada. The author provides us with a very admirable snapshot of her feelings while she is going through all of this, and I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is considering moving to new surroundings or customs. I originally read this book because I thought it would be more of a travel book about Bhutan, which is hard for foreigners to get into. The book does a reasonable job of providing a description of the terrain, landscape, people, culture, and climate. I also liked the descriptions of the political conflicts that are happening within Bhutan, and hearing about her students' voices about it. But this book isn't just about Bhutan, it also has an ongoing theme about the author's relationship with her back-home boyfriend and new ones in Bhutan. I guess this was part of her personal story in her Bhutan experience, but I had trouble shifting back to that throughout the book, given the larger scope of the book: a western teacher in a hidden and remote country. Overall, very good and recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: In this book, Jaime Zeppa describes her life in Bhutan. The most important thing to know about this book is that it is about a personal experience and is not a travel book. In her book, Zeppa describes the country, politics, and people of Bhutan through her own eyes and experiences. She does not write this book to be a documentary on Bhutan, it is a story on how Bhutan changed her.
Zeppa does a great job of describing the country through her experiences. After the reader finishes the book, they feel like they know the author, the people she speaks of, and the country personally. Her descriptions of the land make the book come to life. I do not normally like a lot of detailed description in novels and other books that I read, but as you read page after page she paints a very beautiful and detailed picture so that the reader is able to see it first hand. She does a wonderful job describing what the country looks like physically. Here is a piece of how she describes her home. "The strip of garden all around my house is ablaze with crimson poppies, orange gladioli, yellow dahlias, and several varieties of roses. A flowering shrub climbs up the door frame and drops tiny pink petals on my lap. Huge crows swoop and circle overhead, and a bird I cannot see sings sweetly from the gracious arms of a cherry tree." It is very easy for the reader to see the garden and the birds even if they do not know specifically what the different flowers look like. Another example is when she is describing dusk falling at her first posting. "The mist is at war with the mountains, and winning. It creeps like a disease, withering green trees, eroding ridges, diminishing the massive bulk of the mountains, turning solid rock to shadow. Everything looks long-deserted, haunted, like the last day of time."
Her descriptions of the culture and the people make the reader feel like they know what the author is going through. One example shows the reader what a cultural and language barrier she had to overcome when she arrives at her first posting. On one of the first days of class she asks one student "'[w]hen is your birthday?' He picks up his pencil and writes very carefully while the others watch. Over his shoulder [she reads], 'It is rice and pork.'"
When she is transferred from an elementary school to a college, she learns that there is a lot of gossip among the other lecturers. She describes what she goes through as she is welcomed and invited into other lecturer's homes. "At Mr. Gupta's house, I am warned to keep away from Mr. Matthew, at Mr. Matthew's house, I am warned to stay clear of Mr. Bose. Mr. Bose advises me to have nothing to do with Mr. Chatterji . . ." and so on. You also learn about a great deal of the culture. When she is having tea with a student he "winces slightly when I flip a spoonful of sugar into his cup backhandedly but says nothing." After she asks him if she did anything wrong, he tells her that "in Bhutan, we never pour anything in that backward way unless someone in that household has died. That is how we serve the dead." She continues to write about the things she learns to do and not to do according to the Bhutanese culture.
I have read a few other reviews and out of the ones I read, there were two from people who did not like the book. Both reviews claimed that the author spent her time in Bhutan trying to force her own culture on her students, rather trying to accept their culture. I do not agree. Initially, she looked at the country and the culture through the eyes of a Canadian. In the first chapter of the book she admits that "except for a week on a beach in Cuba, [she] had never been anywhere." This was the main reason for applying for the posting in Bhutan. She wanted to experience another culture. She never actually thought about the fact that while Canada is a largely populated and developed country, Bhutan is a very small third world country. When she first arrives, naturally she only has her culture as a Canadian to judge Bhutan by.
If you continue to read the book you will see that, even though she has doubts about staying in Bhutan, she starts to accept the culture from the first day she arrives. She stops wearing her clothes and begins to wear a kira, which is traditional dress for Bhutanese women, even though she does not have to. As the story continues, she starts to trade in her way of life as a Canadian, and embraces the Bhutanese culture. She cooks and eats the food they do and in the end of the story she "becom[es] a Buddhist." She continues to write that she "does not see Canada as [her] home" anymore.
I really enjoyed this book and I strongly recommend it. It is easy to read, and it is very hard to put down. The language Zeppa uses is comfortable and casual. It is less like reading and more like a conversation. She is very open about her feelings and thoughts, and that enables you to trust her.
If you like to read books about other places and different cultures, and want an inside opinion rather than that of an encyclopedia, you will love this book. If you enjoy tales of love and adventure, this book will thrill you. You need to be a little open minded about different cultures, lifestyles, and religions. If you are not, this story will be a little challenging for you. If you would rather read a tourist's view point of Bhutan, you will not want to spend your time on this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Joy to Read
Review: I've never been to Bhutan and have no plans to go. A friend handed me the book as I left on a vacation. I could not put it down. It's beautifully written. Read it even if you're not about to leave for the Peace Corps.
Rating:
Summary: What a Fabulous Journey!
Review: This book is a terrific journey that is not only rich in detail, but in reality. Being a young girl from a Northern town, I found I could see myself being shocked by the differences in this simplistic, uncomplicated country. The way that Zeppa wrote this book it is both a love story with the country and a coming of age. Readers watch her grow into a more solid self sure woman as she finds her place in this wonderfully magic land. It was such a joy to read, it's easy to see that Zeppa enjoyed writing it.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Book!
Review: I read this book because it was on my reading list for a Bhutan and Burma Suitcase Seminar that I am attending in December '03/January '04. I found this book to be extremely interesting, and I had a very hard time putting it down, so I finished it in less than a day. It also included Buddhism, which will be helpful for my trip as well. All in all, a great read!
Rating:
Summary: thought provoking, touching
Review: In reading Zeppa's physical and spiritual adventure, one's own life can be seen in fresh perspective, diffidence shaken, other worlds hinted at.
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