While walking around the mountain top temple of Kao Kree Ree, we came upon a small wooden monk hut, perched rather precariously atop a huge boulder. John, Day the Thai brother of John's counterpart, and I had just finished our lunch and were about to leave the temple.
The Buddhist monk, Phra Tan, a 31 year old former law student in Bangkok, took the robes of monk hood five years ago at Kao Kree Ree Temple.
Slightly wider than his body and just barely longer than his height, this tiny rustic and extremely spartan hut has been Phra Tan's home for the last three years. No running water, no electricity, no net to fend off the hordes of biting mosquitoes that swarm every morning and night in search of food, Phra Tan chose to build his hut on this boulder, far away from the excitement of Bangkok, even some distance from the temple's main complex...... he built his hut here to spend time in near solitude... studying his mind..... all the while searching for enlightenment.
For several hours, Phra Tan broke his solitude to spend the afternoon talking with us about Buddhism. With his limited English, Phra Tan was able to tell us about his life, before becoming a monk as well as his life at the temple. We also talked about some of the basic principals of Buddhism and how they are applied in Thailand.
For hours we talked, while looking out at the scenic, lush green valley below. The horizon seemed to stretch to the furthest ends of the earth .. so expansive was our view. We sat there and watched dark clouds move across the landscape, dropping rain to the freshly planted rice paddies far below. When I asked Phra Tan why he'd become a monk, John, the Peace Corps Volunteer who had brought me to the temple looked a me and said.....
"The better question is.... why are you not living here?" I did not have an immediate answer to John's question.... but deep in my heart... his question reverberated with an intensity I've rarely felt.
Upon fleeing by train, hot smoggy Bangkok only one day after I arrived in Thailand, I disembarked some six hours later, in the cool, mountainous central Thailand city of Pitsanulok to stay with John, an American Peace Corps Volunteer and his wife Huay, an English teacher at the Nakhonbangyang Pittayakom High School.
Huay and I discussed the Thai English curriculum and some teaching strategies to help make her lessons more student focused as well as participatory. Because the Thai have their own equivalent of the California State Standards, the Thai curriculum is heavy on English grammar and light on conversation.
My classroom demonstration lessons, in contrast to the typical Thai lesson, are VERY participatory, with my trying to get the students to do most of the talking! Thai students are very shy when it comes to speaking English.... so I try and make my lessons engaging and fun. Here a group of seven "volunteers," all hand selected by me.... were asked to say the phrase.. "My favorite food is......" The trick, however, was that they had to repeat what the previous students had named as their favorite food before they could state their own. By the time the seventh student could state their favorite food, they had to repeat the favorite foods of each of the previous six students.... a real challenge to rememberso much and to say it all in English!
When pronunciation proved to be a problem, a mini one-on-one power lesson seemed to do the trick!
There seems to always be another exciting adventure waiting for me somewhere on the planet! My 2008 summer travels to Thailand already hold great promise for more intriguing tales! For example... this week I received an email from John, an American living near Phitsanulok, with the following description of a hard to reach temple ....
"It is really a magical kind of place. It is on a sprawling hilltop or mountaintop (depending on your definitions) and is studded with giant boulders. There are a bunch of bridges connecting the boulders and there are little huts on the boulders that you can stay in. According to the abbot, there are 300 little bridges! The place looks like something out of one of those "fantasy adventure" type computer games. It is quiet and there are a ton of singing birds."
Now does that sing to my adventuresome soul or what!
Earlier this year, I was able to visit China. Our 54 person group of middle school students from my sister Carol's school, along with parents and friends boarded the ten day world wind tour of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Xi'an and Beijing.
Whether it was visiting The Forbidden City......
Climbing the Great Wall....
Or riding every form of public transportation from the bullet train, street cars, cable cars, city buses, boats or planes..
We didn't lose anyone while mingling with China's 1.2 BILLION hard working, hospitable and sometimes quite exotic people!
So let the 2008 adventures continue!
