Adventure!

Today we took a crash course in sociological research methods in the morning AKA we learned things I already knew so I pretty much checked out. We had an awesome visiting Thai professor come and teach so that was fun.

Then, after an amazing lunch with Nat, Julie, Milk, Len, & Peng we got on board the tuk-tuk (love this word) bus cabs which are pretty much the coolest things ever. Imagine a truck bed covered, with benches that sit about 10 people. It's roughly the same size as a US cab except it hold way more people. We drove out to the country side which was only about a 30 minutes away, passing many rice fields and Thai-cows on the way. It was really gorgeous.

Then we were greated by the President of the district we went to. Thailand is broken down into provinces then districts then villages. This district had 8 villages in it. Each group went to a different village and experienced different parts of it. The village my group went to was actually the home of one of our students so he gave us a tour. We visited the Buddhist temple there and learned about Buddhism, the monk-lifehood, and the role of the temples within the community. The temples run solely off of donations and act as community centers and development centers for the village. Often they offer classes on Saturdays on how to use the computer or they will help students who need tutoring.

The story of the Buddha was painted on several large murals surrounding the walls of the temple. It's said the Buddha lived 10 lives before he reached his sinless life which allowed him to reach englightenment, so there were ten panels each depicting his previous lives and 10 other panels depicting his final life where he reached enlightment. Everything was silver and gold.

I will post some more later...right now I am just too tired.