Buddhism and Evacuation

Perhaps to make up for last time when they left without me, I received a note from the grade three teachers informing me that I should be joining them at the temple.  The note came 15 minutes after they'd left but it's better than no news at all - and in Thailand that's definitely amazing.  So although I wasn't sure why, I headed to the temple across the street from school and joined teachers and students in another Buddhist ceremony.  I later learned that it was the annual temple visit scheduled by school that doesn't correspond to a significant Buddhist day.  It was simply a lesson in Buddhism and temple etiquette.

I've been doing a bit of meditation recently and it was inspiring to see my students do it so well.  They appeared such at peace.  While some kids did it very well, others just didn't have the same knack for it.  I'm sad to admit that as a kid I would have fallen into the latter category.  I see real value in pausing to clear the mind of thoughts, and although I'm only at the beginning of this new journey into meditation, I definitely want to learn more.

I wish I'd learned to focus like this at this age...

I spent some time folding lotus petals to create an arrangement of flowers.  It sounds like a simple and mundane task but there's an art to it, and I enjoyed focusing on improving with each petal.  I was then selected by the other teachers to pass the offerings of flowers and envelopes to the monks.

I totally folded the best ones!...

Everyone knelt before the monks and I joined the teachers at the front.  We formed the wai and bowed to the ground three times, each time putting our palms face-down on the ground before rising and forming the wai again.  We placed our hands on one of the teachers as she sprinkled holy water on the flower arrangements.  The students chanted.

The ceremony begins

When we returned to school the students got a free early lunch, and I realised that I had no classes that morning.  No classes means food time!

A typical lunch at school

There was no last period either.  At 3:30pm my boss informed me that I could've gone home half an hour earlier because they were pumping the school buildings full of chemicals to kill mosquitos.  I watched as clouds of chemicals wafted from the buildings and across the school grounds, where many students were still playing, and wondered just how toxic the clouds were...

Uh, I hope everyone got out in time...