Thailand very beautiful country. Food good. People very quiet. Very shy. But friendly. I tell you story God telling me do something. But I'll tell you in my regular English. Sometimes I worry that when I get back to the states, I won't remember how to use words like a, and, the, is, are or words with a bit more complexity than the ones I've been using for the past 2 months. I sometimes find myself speaking broken English to my teammates forgetting that they know full well what I am trying to say.
If you search free things to do in Chiang Mai online, you will find that you can go to the temples all over the country to something called Monk Chat. It happens every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights. It is a way for tourists to come ask their questions and provide opportunities for the monks to practice speaking English.
When we arrived at our new hostel that was only a few paces away from a local temple, I was excited. I knew I would easily have the opportunity to ask all my questions. I just wanted to better understand the culture of Thailand.
When you walk past the gates of the temple, you will be greeted by someone ushering you to a seating area with a monk to speak with. You generally sit with a group of tourists. I had to bite my tongue so many times because the questions were flooding my mind, but I didn't want to be a monk chat hog. Our monk, Son, asked us to come back Thursday. We asked silly questions like, "Do you have facebook?" He said, "Why not?" We asked more serious questions about life in general like, "What happens why you die?"
The next time we went, we were invited to a session about meditation. I asked Son if it was ok if I just pray to Jesus instead, but still participate. He said, "Why not?" Monk Dara led the session. After we "meditated" for 15 minutes, Dara asked me out of the group of 20 how it was. Of course I said, I was praying instead. He laughed. We did another session of standing meditation when I felt God compelling me to ask Dara to breakfast. I asked God, "But can monks have breakfast with women or anyone for that matter?"
"Why not?"
I thought it was pretty nuts, so I went with it.
So after the 1 hour session, I went up to Dara and asked if we could invite them to our hostel for breakfast.
He told me, "I think this very good thing."
I asked, "Are you sure?"
"Why not?
I ran out of time to finish, so this is part one.
