Home Sweet Home & More to Come

For those of you visiting this blog please come back often as I will continue to post our experiences over the next two weeks.

I am so grateful to be home and tomorrow morning I will return to work at Sonic and there is also plenty of work waiting for me as well. It is interesting how scarcity leaked into my head. In truth in my life, there is no lack of anything - and compared to where I came from - I am so thankful to be borne an American.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting specific experiences and project goals. Here now I will return to the experience of teaching at the Gaden Shartse School because for myself, this was the most enriching experiences. The young monks of Gaden Shartse attend this school six days each week with a regimented cirriculum of English, Grammer, math and then Tibetan Grammer.

Here as I mentioned earlier there is a computer room with some old Windows 98 machines but no computer teacher.

Here we installed Math Rabbit and Reader Rabbit much to the delight of all the monks - young and old.

It would cost roughly $1500 for a computer teacher for one year. That is 6 days/week computer training. Only $1500 for such a huge impact on this world.

Computer training would be very valuable to the monks (as well as the nuns) as there are programs which can better further their English, they could wirte to their sponsors using WORD, have some directions on Mavis Beacon Typing Teacher and also be able to perfect their dharma studies as we installed the Tibetan Sambhota keyboard convertor.

As it sits now, the monks go in the computer room in the afternoon and just click away on anything that comes up... they are trying so desperately to understand but they have no knowledge of the computer. Consequently, they read and reread the I/E window that comes. For the one or two that have had some computer experience (say when they go home to visit their families), they help the others on Mavis Beacon Typing teaching. To me, this is like a starving farmer living atop a potatoe field... they have so much zeal for the computer - and natural aptitude. They just need a little help. As soon as I get some time I will begin to look for a grant which may help pay the $1500 for a computer instructor for them:)