A thai birthday

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Once again it’s been a while since I updated my blogg. There is so much going on and it’s a little intimidating to think about writing it all down.

October the 8th was Coun Paws birthday (that is my host dad, his real name is Mr. Sutin) and I found out that Thai people do not celebrate like we, in North America. They go to temples. Yes indeed, it is a plural. Or at least it was in my case.

Coun Paw follows a buddist superstition, which is if one is to receive good luck they must go to 9 temples. Not just one, or two , or even three. NINE. And while it is all very exciting in the idea of going through an age-old tradition steeped in custom, one's knees do begin to hurt after the second temple. Mind you they are broken up into two days with my host family. One temple visit consisted of 2 and a half hours though. Which takes a large amount of concentration and discrete shifting. The first day we did this it was done with Coun Paw's mother and father. At each temple a monk would chant and socialize with us as we visited. After the monk would chant, Coun Paw would give a form of gift as well as money, as is Thai custom. On the second day Pee Pin (Pee meaning “older sister”) the live-in maid replaced Coun Paw's parents and we visited the remaining 5 (and I think they threw in a 6th but I might be wrong.) One of them was a very large temple that had a crystal figure in the center. (I took a picture) there were also some female “monks.” However, Thai people do not consider them to be monks or nuns, as it is a completely different system. Instead the name for a male devotee is Prra (with the r rolled). And female (as close a can be written in English) is Schee. All the Schee were wearing pure white to show their status.

Then we went to dinner at the Pizza Company. The only problem is that every thing was done in Thai form. This is to say, there were forks and knifes that every thing was expected to be eaten with, as well as dipping sauce for the garlic bread. This made it quite difficult to eat for any north American until I found out that as long as I had a tissue handy any one can eat with their hands. It’s just a very foreign concept to the Thai population. Following dinner a piece of cake was eaten, yes indeed it was a piece! Cake being eaten so little in Thai culture that only enough cake is purchased for that time. As I found out when trying to buy a whole cake. And then we went home where every one ate rice as pizza is not actually considered a meal.

The next two days were spent with little to do as my host parents were normally busy. So I would be entertaining myself by either going to the school and watching the band or learning some Thai from my host dad’s assistant Pee Gai. After two days of relaxing it was a relief to be off to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. It was still exciting even though I had to get up at 3 am. More to follow on that adventure!

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Photos

buddha day
here is one of the 9 monks visited on my host dads birth day

holy water
holy water from the 7 sites each with a different image

flowers in a temple
while there were many monks there were also flowers