Advertisement
Published: October 6th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Jet lagged Robert
Robert was so ready to hit the bed - don't be fooled by the smile :) In the last post I mentioned I would give you a run down of who from Houston I am attending this conference with:
We have two Venerables from our temple in Houston attending the conference with us, Vens. Hong and Yuan Chuan (The departing Abbess of our temple).
From the BLIA chapter there is Brad and his wife Yvonne (The couple in the picture from the last post), Robert (who lives in Houston and Spokane Washington - he has been with the temple since it was built), Jun Lao Sher (the temple's resident Chinese language teacher) and Mei who has just recently moved from Houston back to Taiwan for work.
So with everyone introduced, on with the remainder of the day...
We stayed at the tea house for quite a time discussing details of the Abbess' upcoming reassignment back to Taiwan. Chung Mei temple in Houston is her fourth temple to build and found for the order (previously she finished a temple in China and 2 in Australia before she came to Houston; so the headquarters has assigned her to be one of the supervisors for a very important building on the campus here in Kaohsiung.
Branch Temples
Just outside our residence hall, they had this massive display of some of the branch temples around the world. Ours is at 8 o'clock! This trip is a bit bittersweet for our group from Houston, because not only will this be the last time we see the Abbess for a long while, but the second in command, Rev. Hong, we found out is being reassigned to a new diplomatic mission in New York to the United Nations. We are all very excited and happy for them, but as I said this is all very bitter sweet.
After the tea house we headed to find our rooms, got our keys, and went to the room. This is where the afternoon got a little strange. Robert and I headed up to the room and walked in to find 3 (yes three!) sets of bunk beds side by side. Odd as it may sound this just gave us pause briefly - as this point we were ready for any bed and the ramifications of 6 beds in our room were inconsequential in relation to sleep.
I hit the bed and passed out. Until there was a knock on the door, and this lady with the conference comes in to drop off welcome cards on our beds! Even once she realized that we were asleep - she
Our Group Photo
With the Abbott of the main temple! was not to be deterred from her mission - she proceeded to make sure the cards were in place on each bunk. Odd, but not as odd as the next person who walked into our room (and yes they do have keys to our room - we did lock the door - did not matter) and attempted to hand to my half asleep ass (my roommate informed me of this because I still do not remember this) the complimentary bath kit which she was putting on everyone’s bed.
We had one last visitor, but thankfully they left their little gift bags just inside the door.
Around 5ish we woke up and had a little food and visited with each other, and then took a walking tour of the central area of the temple complex.
Just as we were getting on our way, Rev. Hong grabbed me and pointed to a Monk in prayer robes walking up the path. She told me that that was the new Abbott of the head temple (the number 3 guy in the order) and asked if we would like to have our picture taken with him.
Well yeah! Duh….
So she called out to him
Main Temple at night
The main shrine and courtyard at night. and he graciously walked back to where we were and was more than happy to meet us and take a picture with us. We were beside ourselves.
To put this into general perspective… it was the equivalent of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury (If you are a protestant, or one of the senior Cardinals in the Catholic Church) and having your picture taken with him.
Needless to say we were walking a couple of inches off the ground for the remainder of the evening.
We continued on the walking tour and got to see the temple lit up for the evening. We were pretty tired and after taking a poll it was decided the better part of wisdom was to turn in early and get ready for registration the next day.
As we all headed off to our rooms, I couldn’t help but look out at the strange surroundings and stand in awe at the incredible forces and people that made it possible for me to be here.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0313s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kim
non-member comment
wow!
I'm so glad you started this blog! I'm gonna enjoy reading your daily posts....