Recently Acharya Arumuganathaswami and Natyam Jayanatha have returned from their short trip to California. Above are some photos from their journey. The two flew into San Jose, CA, late at night and drove on empty highways to the state's capital of Sacramento. Their goal is to keep tabs on the developing California textbook narrative draft process. See here for details as to what this process is all about.

Basically we are doing our small part to ensure that the presentation of Hinduism in public school textbooks is fair and accurate as opposed to the current, slightly slanderous content. Our monks checked into a hotel down the street from the Department of Education, and next attended the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) meeting, in which comments can be submitted and vocalized in regards to the IQC's current work on the draft narrative.

After two days of meetings, with our monks giving public testimony, the task was done until the next meeting. Before returning to Kauai, the monks had an evening meeting with local members of the Hindu Education Foundation. The HEF had been very helpful in this process by encouraging their children to testify at the meeting about their experiences in the classroom when studying world religions in 6th grade. The monks also took an opportunity to take a short hike through the Bay Area's (currently dry) hills. Then back to Kauai they went!