buddhist ordination

On Friday at school, the Thai teachers invited us to attend the ordination of one of the teacher's sons into monastic life. From what I understand, every boy becomes a monk for at least a week or so in order to honor his family. That's how it was explained to me, anyway. I didn't see what all the hullabaloo was about if he only donned the saffron robes for 10 days.

The van came to pick us up at our apartment at 6:15 this morning. The temple was about an hour away. There was no traffic that early, and it was really, really nice to get away from the dirty city for a change.

My freshman year, I visited a Hindu temple with the BIC program at Baylor. I remember expecting to see a lot of red and gold, and was surprised when everything was painted in pastel colors. The Buddhist temple today looked like what I had envisioned. It was all red and gold with polished granite steps leading up to the entrance. The roofs were so tall, and steeply slanted.

We looked around the temple a bit and then headed to a pavilion nearby to sit and eat breakfast. Rice, of course, was the main part of the meal. I drank coconut milk straight from a coconut. And there was a bowl of fruit - including my personal favorite: land urchins (also known as rambutan).

After breakfast, we walked, bounced, and danced in a procession back to the temple to the beat of drums and the rhythm of family and friends singing. Some of the Thai teachers showed us hand motions that go with Thai dancing. I tried my best, but it required a good bit of coordination. We circled the temple three times and then dragged our sweat-soaked selves up the steps to the entrance. There, the monk-to-be tossed handfuls of flowers, coins, and folded origami-like flowers into the crowd. Then he went inside to go through some kind of ceremony.

Several of us stayed outside and sat down. One of the Thai teachers, Nummon, taught us the colors and numbers in Thai while we were waiting.

After the ordination, the crowd headed back to the food pavilion, where it was time for lunch. It started out with pieces of pomelo and crispy orange rice chips that looked similar to pork rinds. Then we had a plate of rice noodles, a couple of bowls of soup, and some curry. They kept bringing plates every 10 minutes or so for the next hour and a half. Every time we sat back in our chairs and thought the meal was finished, they'd bring out something new. At noon, when lunch was completely through, we counted 17 different plates of food.

We loaded the bus to go to the floating market. I learned that I'm going to need a better mastery of Thai numbers if I really want to haggle over prices.