Thailand- what a sweet country with so many great memories! At the start of our time in Thailand I was incredibly blessed and beyond grateful to have my mom come out and visit me for 5 days!
It was so comforting and refreshing to have her here beside me, as it had been 8 months since I had last seen her. With us constantly moving and being in new environments and meeting new people it was amazing having such a familiar face around for a little while. We had the opportunity to go on adventures together, catch up, and have her experience a little of what life has been like for me this year. What an incredible 5 days!
While my mom was with my squad in Chiang Mai, we went to visit one of the Buddhist Temples and had the opportunity to partake in something called a Monk Chat, which is an opportunity for monks to improve their English. This monk chat comprised of us sitting down with one of the monks, Cody, where we got to ask him questions about his life as a monk and what all that consisted of. He then followed by asking us questions about our lives and what we were doing in Thailand. Buddhist are very open to talking about their beliefs as well as hearing about other people’s beliefs, so we were able to listen to his as well as share our own.
At the end of the conversation he said, “Would you like to come teach the little monks English at our high school?”
To which we responded, “ Yes!” What an incredible opportunity!
Our mornings at the school began at 8am with us watching the little monks (also known as Novices) chant for the first hour. After this the little monks split up into classes and we headed straight for the English class. Don’t let the term ‘little monks’ fool you, they may be up to 20 years old.
Alan, the English teacher, split us up into groups of 4 or 5 monks to one of us ‘teachers’. We spoke to them for about 45 minutes as we asked them all kinds of questions about their lives, hobbies, and families. Followed by them asking us personal questions and then having to remember our answers to present it to the class. This lead to many laughs as you can imagine some things are just lost in translation!
Throughout the 2 days that we got to teach it was incredible to see just the way the monks love people and accept everyone. There wasn’t any hiding of the fact that we were a group of Christian foreigners teaching in a Buddhist high school, and there was no restriction on what we could or could not say. They simply loved us and showed such incredible hospitality!
