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Yesterday our new teacher came:
We started work on getting him here on December 26 of last year--he was denied his visa in March, for no apparent reason, and had to reapply in August, which meant travelling by train twice from southern India where his monastery is to New Delhi, then waiting there for weeks while we waited to hear from the Embassy. It also took many, many telegrams from our senator's office to get any response at all.
We knew he had the visa, but didn't know until Friday that he'd arrive Saturday. For some reason they had him fly into Atlanta, which meant a 3 hour car trip after his 18 hours of air travel. But at last he's here!
Unfortunately they didn't give his translator a visa, so he will have to learn English before he can really teach us. I couldn't tell yesterday what his level of English is, because I know how scrambled one's brain is, even a Geshe's, after all that. But as you can see in the picture, he has a kind, intelligent face, and fortunately some of us have taught English.
He's of mixed Tibetan and Indian descent, I think, but trained in a Tibetan monastery in South India. The Geshe degree is the equivalent of a PhD. But I don't know if it got him ready for South Carolina!
The road to enlightenment is very twisty.
We started work on getting him here on December 26 of last year--he was denied his visa in March, for no apparent reason, and had to reapply in August, which meant travelling by train twice from southern India where his monastery is to New Delhi, then waiting there for weeks while we waited to hear from the Embassy. It also took many, many telegrams from our senator's office to get any response at all.
We knew he had the visa, but didn't know until Friday that he'd arrive Saturday. For some reason they had him fly into Atlanta, which meant a 3 hour car trip after his 18 hours of air travel. But at last he's here!
Unfortunately they didn't give his translator a visa, so he will have to learn English before he can really teach us. I couldn't tell yesterday what his level of English is, because I know how scrambled one's brain is, even a Geshe's, after all that. But as you can see in the picture, he has a kind, intelligent face, and fortunately some of us have taught English.
He's of mixed Tibetan and Indian descent, I think, but trained in a Tibetan monastery in South India. The Geshe degree is the equivalent of a PhD. But I don't know if it got him ready for South Carolina!
The road to enlightenment is very twisty.