Return Part 2 (9-2)

Thursday I went to school with Khun Samaporn to hang out with her for the day. She now teaches English to kindergarten to 6^th grade students in a small, rural school that has 200 students. Since the school has only 9 teachers, she also teaches some science and social studies. Two teachers will retire in September; so there will be only 7 teachers and she will have more classes. After lunch with the teachers, we went to the bank to deposit the students’ money that they save each week. Then she decided to go to Amnat Charoen to buy a shirt for me. I had made the mistake of commenting on a teacher’s ASEAN shirt and saying I liked it when Khun Samaporn asked; so she decided to buy me one. However, we found only one that I liked enough to let her buy and it was too large. Not greatly disappointed, as I liked the teacher’s shirt but didn’t really want one.

While I was at the school, I played my favorite game with some of the boys after school. They were coming down from Scouts and wanted to go out the door I was standing beside. I said “hello” to each one and wouldn’t let them out till they responded. I always enjoyed doing that, and I think students enjoy it after they get started. They certainly wait to make sure everyone says “hello.”

I returned to Khun Toy’s house just in time to leave for the wat for the afternoon chanting/prayer session that is held during the three month rainy season, also called Buddhist Lent. I used to do this once a week when I lived here, and Khun Toy didn’t do it because she was still teaching. Now that she is retired, she goes every evening and most mornings; so that’s what I did, too. Khun Toy made sure I was appropriately dressed by lending me some clothes—skirt and white blouse for morning and white clothes for evening. The evening white clothes include the white scarf that I gave her when I left. I’m pretty sure it hadn’t been used.

The evening services last 2.5 hours. Everyone chants/prays from the book for half an hour. Then there is a silent meditation for 30 minutes. This is followed by more chanting/praying for an hour and a talk from a monk for half an hour. It’s a bit long for me to sit still on the floor. After two days, I could hardly sit with my legs bent under me, as it hurt my knees after two minutes. I changed positions every half hour. The old women don’t need to do this. I enjoy an hour of chanting and silent meditation. An hour and a half is OK. But the last hour gets long, especially the monk’s talk since I don’. After the first two times, I settled into it and was able to use the whole time to meditate in some way. It was good to be there among the community. Several of the women make sure to greet me, and it was good to see them. My presence was noted. The abbot posts a lot of photos on Facebook, and I have enjoyed seeing them in the photos. Friday’s post included special mention and photos of the American visitor. Other posts also included me. Tuk called one night and mentioned having seen my photos at the wat on Facebook. When the abbot announced the attendance from each neighborhood, he included on person from America.

The services are now being held upstairs. Each person has a padded seating mat and a small table with a book stand. Before they were held downstairs and everyone took their own mat and read from books on the floor or in their hands. The upstairs room is air conditioned, which is nice. 

The central feature of the altar is a new case with a pot and some small Buddha images in it. Khun Dakom told me that they are about a thousand years old. 

They were discovered about twenty years ago when digging for a new building. The twenty Buddha images were in the pot.

Friday I got to sleep late and woke up at 7:30. It felt good to sleep until I was ready to waken. The morning was for relaxing. I sat on the porch and enjoyed the view of the pond. Then we went to Amnat Charoen to take care of some business and have lunch—duck noodle soup, which they know is one of my favorites. I’d been thinking about it. Khun Teamjan, Khun Suwit and their grandson joined us for lunch. In the evening, we returned to the wat for the evening chanting/praying.

Saturday we returned to Wat Hua Don for two days and nights. This was the leave at 5:00 AM trip to get there for the morning feeding of the monks. When we arrived, I helped arrange snacks and fruit on the trays. The nun told me in English that the people in the village like the food to be arranged beautifully for the monks. After breakfast, Khun Toy told me that we would stay Monday night, too, because they will do the evening chanting/praying. I wasn’t very happy about that, as I had thought about visiting Aemmie that day and sleeping on the tile floor for three nights seemed like a bit much. So I suggested that I visit Aemmie on Saturday, which worked for her, too, as her husband was planning to come to Ubon on Monday. We ended out not having a lot of time together, since she had plans in the afternoon and ended out having to take Maysia to the clinic to check her cough in the evening, but it was good to see her and have a little time together with her and her daughter. And I enjoyed the bed. I enjoyed meeting Maysia in person. Her personality shows on Facebook photos, but it was fun to see it in action.

Sunday morning Khun Teamjan picked me up and took me to Wat Hua Don. I was refreshed and ready for two days there. The first event was a special ceremony for Phra Kong, since he had had an operation and returned from the hospital. I remember doing this for someone when I was here before. Because he’s a monk, instead of tying string around his wrists, women often dropped it across his wrists to avoid possibly touching him. 

After the ceremony, many photos of various groups were taken.

The Malaysian family who were coming to see Phra Kong after his surgery arrived at 9:30. This was their fourth visit to the wat. They have visited a number of wats in Thailand over the years and met Phra Kong through a Malaysian monk in Thailand whom they had visited. He recently spent two months in Malaysia, and they spent time with him there. Khun Toy said they have donated a lot of money to the wat. Vanessa’s name is on the fence that Chinese Malaysians donated money for. She and Khun Toy and Khun Dakom have been Facebook and Line, a chatting app, friends for about a month. They chat in English every day at least twice but hadn’t met in person yet. So Khun Toy and Khun Dakom were excited about their arrival. With limited English, not a lot of conversation took place, but gifts were exchanged, food was shared, and photos were taken. I chatted with their daughter (age 16) quite a bit, as her English is pretty good. They left at 12:30 to fly back to Bangkok and on to Malaysia. So they made the trip to be there for only three hours. I guess it was important to them to see Phra Kong after his surgery. Before they left, Phra Kong called the son over and put his hand on his head and said a blessing. The son beamed as he walked away. This was very nice of him to do, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the subordinate status of women, as he did not give a blessing to the daughter. Maybe there was another reason for his selecting the son, but this is what went through my mind.

I was happy to notice that the two nuns sit among the villagers now. When I was here before, the nun didn’t attend services. If she did, she sat off to the side, not as part of the group.

I enjoyed the two days at the wat now that I was mentally prepared for them. Each day I walked through the forest at least twice. We relaxed in our cabin. Each morning we helped get the donated food ready to present to the monks. I enjoyed helping with this. Monday was a Buddha day, which was the reason we stayed there the extra day. At 9:00 Khun Toy, two other women, and I went to the old temple to meditate for an hour. They also chanted/prayed for half an hour before and after the meditation. It’s a good place for meditation. At 2:00 it was cleaning time. We swept leaves from the trails. At 6:00 it was time for the evening chanting/praying and meditation. I arrived after Khun Toy did because I’d forgotten my sitting mat. When nothing was happening and few people were there, I decided to do walking meditation while waiting for the service to start. After half an hour I joined Khun Toy and realized that everyone seated was meditating, not just waiting for the service to start. While we meditated for another ha-2lf hour, more people and the monks arrived. After the hour of chanting/praying, I thought we were finished, but it was only a short break. Then Phra Kong talked for 45 minutes. When we finished at 9:00, Khun Toy announced that we would wake up at 3:00. That took me by surprise, but I later remembered that this is what we did when we slept at the wat on Buddha days. The difference was that I hadn’t realized this is what we were doing because the other people went home. So at 3:00 we woke up and went to the building with the relics from a previous monk. We started with half an hour of meditation followed by chanting/praying for an hour. We were back in our cabin at 4:30, which also surprised me because the services I had participated in before lasted until 5:00. But then I remembered that we started them with sweeping. After a brief rest in the cabin, it was time to go to the kitchen to organize the food.

Tuesday morning after breakfast Khun Toy went looking for wild mushrooms and found quite a few. Since it rained every day, there were usually new mushrooms to be found. I took my last forest walk, as we leaving that morning and I wouldn’t be returning again this trip. 

A highlight was one of the most beautiful and unusual spider webs I’ve ever seen. I was glad to have had so much time there, as it is a special place that I really enjoy.