Well…. It HAS been awhile, eh? I spent a week in Bangkok and then I returned Tuesday morning. Wednesday morning I was supposed to be at the Buddhist Monastery at 7:30am…. To say the least, I was crunched for time. I had to pack for the Monastery and unpack from Bangkok, wash clothes (and buy shirts for the monastery), go to the Rotary meeting at 7:30pm… the list never ends…… In any case, the modem was missing (again) and I couldn’t email…. So I think I’ll send y’all several emails because my week in Bangkok will take awhile to type and the Buddhist Monastery experience will also.

I was supposed to leave the monastery on the 10th of October but I threw up several times every day I was there… so I went home early. Oh, to Barb Perry- thank you so much for the letter from the Deacons, it’s always really fun to receive good ol’ snail mail! It’s just so personal, ya know? .

A week in Bangkok….. (September 23rd to September 30th)Here’s exerts from my journal entries about Bangkok:

WAIT WAIT WAIT

Before you even begin to read exerts from my diary, I think I ought to warn you about Bangkok Taxi driver. They are THE biggest jerks in the world. They purposely ripped us off almost every single day, at least once—and taxi’s are expensive enough without getting ripped of!!!!! I’m not even going to bother to mention each individual situation because that would take FOREVER…. Yeah, so Bangkok taxi drivers leave a lot to be desired (editors prerogative). Okay… here go the journal entries:

September 23^rd

Well, we arrived safely in Bangkok after an 9 hour train ride. I sat with Gwen the first half and them Lu and Gwen switched places and Lu sat with me until we arrived in Bangkok. We ran to a hotel and used the bathroom and by the time we were out of the hotel, the driver was there to pick us up in a SMALL car and we had all our luggage for a week and 6 girls to fit in the car on top of the driver….. oiy oiy oiy!

September 24^th

Well we woke up around 8am, showered and got ready… we ate breakfast (eggs, toast, and sausage) and finally left the house around 11:30am…. We went to the mall cuz we wanted to go to Asia Books cuz they have English books there, but it turns out that Asia books was actually at a different mall…oiy…. But we chilled there and bought some stuff but it was mostly fulong stuff and a mostly fulong mall (fulong means foreigner)…. You know, it’s really strange how much Thailand has changed me. When I saw the fulong I was shocked and seriously thought to myself—wow!, white people!.... and on top of that—I kept thinking, stupid fulong, look how disgusting they look. Don’t they know that’s inappropriate and that they all look like prostitutes! And then I realized, that if I were still in America, I wouldn’t have looked twice at them or thought that they were dressed inappropriately, but because Thailand is so strict it seemed so disgusting for me to see skirts above the knee… or shoulders… or whatever… it was really strange.

September 25^th

Wow, today was packed. We honestly walked at least 4 miles today. We went to Chinatown and then we went the Indian market. I mostly bought some cheap jewelry cuz I decided I want to accessorize my wardrobe with “thai princess jewelry” (as Alwyne calls it). We had a lot of fun, but we were past exhaustion by the time we all got home. Random fact: Thai food is MUCH better in Ubon than in Bangkok…. It’s almost as if they think that fulong won’t know the difference so it doesn’t need to be decent. We took a taxi back to the gate of the complex and then decided to walk home…. Or should I say, swam….. the water was up to the bottom of my calf. It was ridiculous…. In any case, after we came home from the flooded streets we showered off and then played cards…. Mostly bs cuz it was the only game that everyone knew how to play.

September 26^th

Today was Alwyne’s 18th birthday. We went to a movie (in ENGLISH) American Pie 3 (it wasn’t good, don’t waste your time or money on it… oh by the way, we get movies about 4 to 6 weeks after you guys get them). Then we went to a fulong part of Bangkok and went to a hip hop club and danced. We had so much fun. Oh yeah, Tom arrived in Bangkok and went to the club with us too. Tom is an oldie from South Africa who lives on a beach about 2 hours from Bangkok (yeah, that’s the hard-knock life….). He and Gwen are kinda boyfriend/girlfriend… But they’re not really committed cuz he’s going back to South Africa and she’s going back to Canada and they don’t even live in the same part of Thailand!

September 27^th

Well we were out pretty late at the club last night, so today we basically just stayed home and talked and played card games and stuff. At one point, we did go to Jiffy to get some food…. But other than that we didn’t really leave the house. The cheerleading championships for all of Thailand was today and Benjama WON!!!! (for those of you who don’t know, Benjama is a high school here in Ubon and 5 out of the 10 Ubon exchangers attend school there). We watched the whole thing live on TV and it was really awesome. They asked Alwyne to join the dance team and she recently did so she couldn’t compete this time, but she’s working with them several times a week at practice and she really loves it.

September 28^th

Well, we went to another mall today and shopped and ate and chilled until it was time for Tom to catch a train home. We originally wanted to see a movie, but they were all sold out like hours ahead of time… I guess movies in English are in pretty high demand in Bangkok. Then we went to another small, cheap market and shopped for awhile. Yup, real exciting…

September 29^th

We went to Wat Pa Gow in the morning and it was so beautiful. It was enormous and elaborate. The colors, the shine, the Emerald Buddha (that’s really made out of jade) were breathtaking. Then we went to the former palace of King Rama 5 it was very pretty and large and had a strange mixture of western and eastern culture. The palace was so huge that it was color-coded by who lived in each part so that you wouldn’t get lost. Come to think of it, almost all of the palace was color-coded…. Rooms, tea sets (by days of the week)… it was really kinda cool. After we got home we finished packing and got ready to ride the night train. I most def prefer the night train over the regular train. Cuz you sleep, and bam, suddenly you’re in Ubon! When we returned to Ubon on the morning of September 30th, Alwyne’s dad gave me a ride home and then I got my stuff ready for the monastery.

A day in a Buddhist Monastery

2:30am wake-up

3:00am ringing of the gong

3:30am morning chantings

4:00am-5:00am morning meditation

5:45am chores (sweeping the DIRT roads in the forest)

7:20am prepare the food for our ONE meal

8:10am present food to the monks

8:20am receive blessing for food

8:45am (this time actually varies because the blessing can last

anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour and a half…. It just depends) we move

to the eating area

9:30am wash up after the meal

11:00am “chill” (we’re supposed to meditate in our living

quarters, but we all actually just sleep, cuz hey—we’ve been working for the

past 8 hours…. And it’s only 11:00 AM!!!!!)

2:00pm meditation with a nun-in-training named Pang (from

Malaysia)

2:45-3:??pm question and answer session with Pang

4:00pm tea time set-up

4:30pm tea time

5:00-5:30pm tea time clean-up

7:00-7:30pm evening chantings

7:30-8:30pm evening meditation

Then we’d get back to our living quarters around 9:00pm, do our stretches and crunches (my legs have never hurt so much in my life in the way they do after meditation) wash-up and get to bed…after all, 2:30am always seems to come so early!

Here’s a journal entry of mine from October 3rd (the night of my third day in the monastery):

Well, to say the least, the last three days have been quite a trip… in fact, this morning we were all discussing the ways prison is better than this. (lol)… no really—This is gonna be one of those experiences that I will always look back on for the rest of my life—for instance, when I’m giving childbirth I can say—“hey, at least I’m not in a Buddhist Monastery!”—yes it really is that bad. Don’t worry mom and dad, there’s no way I’d ever become Buddhist after this! Actually—seriously, being here has really strengthened my faith and given me extra time to think and pray.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! BUGS!!!!!!!!! G2G!

October 4^th

To say that bugs were a problem in the Monastery would be the BIGGEST understatement of all time. They have these horrible black ants that feel like fire ants when they bite…. It’s SOOO painful, and my feet and legs are COVERED in bites from them. It’s impossible to avoid them especially considering it’s a 15-minute walk to get anywhere from our living quarters and half the time we walked in the dark (which is really dangerous with all the wildlife like the snakes and the spiders as big as me….)

well- talk to yall lata--can't wait to hear from yall!

luv,

kt