A lot of foreign students come India to learn Hindi and most of them either go to Masoori or Varanasi. They say that there are only three good Hindi schools in India and Varanasi and Masoori gets most attention. An student of University of Washington named Lane Rasberry stayed at my guest house for five months. He was in Varanasi to learn Hindi with a school called Bhasha Bharti. He wanted to outsource chemistry research to India and do his PhD research with some Indian scientist. He used to go to classes two hours a day/ five days a week and pay Rs. 200-250 per hour which was a lot more than what I used pay to learn English.

He wanted to learn Hindi with Bhasha Bharti for his whole stay but decided to leave early because of some reasons after 2 months. Later he started practicing Hindi on his own in a Hindi speaking environment in my home. He started learning Hindi by my family member’s help, specially my father. He was still looking for a teacher for Hindi classes but wasn’t able to find one. I also tried to find a teacher but I was never ever satisfied with the people who claimed to be a good Hindi teacher for foreigners.

We tried few teachers but none of them were able to satisfy either Lane or me. One of them was a queen and would talk about himself more than teaching Lane. Lane went to my English teacher and as I told him that Lane pays Rs. 200 per hour to Bhasha Bharti, his mouth became water. He was trying to make Lane come to him at any cost but I thought it was better to go to Bhasha Bharti if he had to same fee. Finally I left going there to avoid his pressure on me to bring Lane.

Leaving time his Hindi was good enough to express his feelings. He could understand better than he could speak. I had no problem understanding his Hindi but he still needed lots of practice. I don’t know if he will be able to practice Hindi in the US or not. Lane told me about Skype and it was great idea to help him practice his Hindi even he is in the US. I would try to communicate him in Hindi through Skype.