Uberoi Conference, Orlando and More From Florida Mission

Our monks on the road have been busy to say the least and we are going to give you the full scoop. Take a deep breath and prepare yourself, ok? ready, here we go!

Uberoi Conference 2015, Tampa, Florida. The three day conference took place at the University of South Florida. Uberoi\

s theme for this year is The Teaching of Dhrmic Faiths Within Higher Education. '

There were introductions and a few speakers in the first evening session and more detailed presentations on the second day.

This second day was the main, all-day event. Acharya Arumuganathaswami gave his keynote presentation about the failure of the department of education to change the textbooks and in the afternoon gave a very successful presentation of our new history movies. Everyone was attentive and all were delighted to hear of the success of part one, now with over 700,000 views on youtube.

About a month ago, Ved and Kathy Nanda (of the Uberoi foundation board) visited Kauai and saw the game project we are working on in the Ganapati Kulam. They had planned to have it presented somewhat informally on the side at the start of the day. Turns out they gave Sadhaka Jayanatha the slot for the lunchtime keynote presentation. So throughout the morning he hastily prepared a keynote on video games and their evolving relevance in education, which concluded with a look at what we are working on in kauai. The crowd was wild with excitement, as far as academics get excited.

The conference was well organized this year, in that presentations were kept shorter with more time for questions. It also had some more engaging sessions, probably due to people needing to compress their information. The third day will be a short morning session and then people will fly off. Our team on the ground headed to the airport to pick up their car and drive to Orlando for the evening.

Monks arrive at the Hindu Temple of Central Florida. Satguru Bodhinatha has been here in the past, and had helped to install the Sivalingam. They visited the shrines, then proceeded to a room on the side where Acharya Arumuganathaswami gave his presentation explaining the textbook issues, as well as the history movies (about 45 people present).

We also presented the game project, which to the teams surprise received extremely positive responses wherever they tromped. Everyone there seemed inspired to help with the textbooks, and many offered their assistance with the educational game project.

Night shot of the temple

A beautiful lake in Ocala, Florida, the next stop for our traveling troup. A promenade around the lake in the early morning is the break they needed on this information packed trip.

One of the many boons of Florida: water everywhere.

There were also a lot of birds, including several herons. For more on what that is... \"The herons are long-legged freshwater and coastal birds in the family Ardeidae, with 64 recognised species (some are called \"egrets\" or \"bitterns\" instead of \"heron\"). Within Ardeidae, all members of the genera Botaurus and Ixobrychus are referred to as \"bitterns\", and--including the zigzag heron or zigzag bittern--are a monophyletic group within the Ardeidae. However, egrets are not a biologically distinct group from the herons, and tend to be named differently because they are mainly white or have decorative plumes. Although egrets have the same build as herons, they tend to be smaller.\"

The Temple of Central Florida in the morning. A quick darshan before moving on.

The Hindu University of America, after many years of having trouble getting going with their work, have now started a new phase of work. They have moved to a much nicer building, which has classrooms and other offices. It is a big step up from their previous place which was quite tattered. Our brothers had a meeting with them about how they can proceed and help with the education of Hinduism, including ideas for how they can get accredited (via larger universities) and how they might assist in teacher training and class visits to temples. We also gifted them copies of the Hindu History Book, which they seem excited about, perhaps to be used as a big part of their teaching material. 

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