Once again, I cannot sleep in, so I am blogging now! I had a
late night with Thai professors, so I did not get a chance to update last
night, so I figured I would do it now…
What an exhausting day! For starters, yesterday was a
national Thailand holiday, the Day of Democracy. As you can probably guess, it is the day they
officially became a democratic government.
No school or work. Yupade, one of
the Thai professors, took up to visit Sukhothai, the 2nd location of
the government. After the war at Ayothaya
(which we visited Monday), the Thai government fled to Sukhothia. This location
was attacked and burned as well, so we got to explore the ancient ruins and
learn about their significance. Here are
some interesting facts we learned about the temples.
1.
9 Kings reigned during the duration at Sukhothai
2.
All the temples face east because Buddha faced
east during his enlightenment.
3.
Buddha once sat under a tree for weeks to
discover the meaning of suffering. He
was looking for insight into the reality of it.
He finally determined that suffering is routed in our attachments and
our attachments cloud and distort reality.
(Pretty cool quote!)
4.
The central temple has a sacred section in the
middle. It is formed by a tall center
tower with 4 shorter towers at the vertexes and 4 pillars at the midpoints of
the sides. (yes, I had to bring math
into my blog..nerd!) The middle is the
tallest because it houses back and head bone from Buddha. The 4 towers represent the mountains they
face. The pillar directly in front
represents the Buddha’s mother birthing him.
There are 168 monks walking around the bottom of this whole
section. They are walking to clockwise
(to the east) offering incense and gold.
It is said this provided them with a sense of enlightenment.
5.
Buddha statues are created in 4 positions: sitting,
standing, walking, and reclining.
Walking and reclining are very rare positions. When Buddha has one hand held in front of
him, palm out, it is said to represent intent for an idea. Buddha’s ears are
very large to signify how importance listening is. His eyes are half closed to represent that
not everything you see is good.
6.
In Thailand, the King must be a Buddhist.
7.
There is a very large statue of the 3rd
King of Sukhothai (almost as big as one of the temples). He created the Thai alphabet. He was also the father of Democracy. (We connected that he was responsible for the
Day of Democracy, which was the day we visit…coincidence! This was very intrinsically satisfying when
we figured it out on our own.) Because of
the day, there was a carpet and flowers laid out as a path to the King. Many, many Thai we standing in line to
worship and pry to the King. Some
brought flowers and offerings to him.
We then traveled to lunch where we student officially
ordered on our own without Dr. Matney’s help.
We had a dish similar to the noodle soup of the previous day. We also had lemon tea, which was very sweet…so
obviously I loved it! Not sure if I have
mentioned this at any point yet, but the toilet situation here…not indoor
plumbing in all places. Thankfully, I
know how to pee in the woods, so I am doing okay. So far, all locations have have stalls and a
toilet figure. However, not all
flush. You just pour more water into the
bowl and due to laws of physics, it flushes all away.
Yupade then took us to a hot springs, which was very beautiful!
A few of us took a ride in paddle boats around the central pond. Major leg workout! As a Thai tradition, we rented 2 rooms to sit
in the water. They were small pool house
looking buildings with hot tubs. Their
culture has a special routine they do. They
splash cool water all over them, like a shower, sit in the hot springs for 10
minutes, out for ten minutes with another cool shower. They repeat this process 3 times. It was very relaxing to even set your feet in
the water.
Like most of our car rides, we find ourselves in random conversations
or lessons from Dr Matney. 8 math nerds
in a car can get very interesting.
Today, we were taught about Euclidian and Non-Euclidian surfaces. Very intense, funny conversations arise from
our random comments!
Our final stop of the night was back to KPRU where we test
trialed our lesson for Friday (teaching to 7/8 graders) on our Thai college
friends. It is a faction game where you
move your piece along 7 whole fraction lines (halves, thirds, fourths, fifths,
sixths, eights, and tenths) in any combination of equivalent fractions to
create the fraction pulled. Players can
move forward and backwards and divide moved up between different lines. To win, a player must get all chips to
1. (As most of you are probably very
confused, so were the Thai students!)
This game has many different rules and strategies that can be
applied. It was very fun trying to
figure out a way to explain the game to our Thai friends in a way they would
understand us. Both Thai and American
students find humor in the fact that we both know little of the other language
and it takes a while to determine what the other is trying to tell us. Such a great learning experience and fun
experience at the same time. This was
very helpful for us to prepare for teaching the 7/8 graders on Friday.
Dinner was interesting like usual. At night, we travel in the professors cars
and give the van driver a break. On our
way there, I rode with Knee Root (American pronunciation). He is a very funny man. We got lost on the way there, made a U turn
in the middle of the road, then created out own parking space. I also sat next to him at dinner along with
the other Thai professors. Conversation with
them is very fun. Learning about their
individual likes as well as some culture customs. To follow a Thai custom, 2 students, definitely
NOT ME, ate the fish eyes. They said
they tasted very good, but I was not about to try! Something about the squishy “pop” and the liquid…not
for me!
Back at the hotel, I learned how to play a card game, Make
9, from the Thai professors Knee Root and Pong.
It is a card game where you pay up to other players based on your
ability to make 9, straights, or same suit out of your 5 cards. Obviously I enjoyed this very much as I am a
card fanatic! My grandpa will be learning
this to add to our list of card games!
These two are very funny men. The
night was full of laughing and joking around.
Like all the Thai this whole trip, they are very welcoming and
social. It is very comforting to have
this instant relationship with them so quickly. We also determined that my name, Em, means hungry in Thai...they thought this was very funny!
Through talking with Thai professors and friends, we have noticed
our English has become very broken already.
We are starting to talk in basic simple sentences without conjunctions,
articles, etc. After 2 more weeks of
this, it will be very natural to me.
Everyone back home, be prepared to here my poor English when I return!
I should probably start getting ready. Our Thai friends are walking us around the
KPRU exhibition today, then getting interviewed by the tv, and then being
guests in their parade….not use to all this special attention!
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