Day 3

Today is New Year's Eve and it has been amazing. We got up very early and left the hotel at 5:45 am to give alms to the Monks. Every morning the Monks walk the street to collect their food for the day in large copper alms bowls. Thai's call giving food to the Monk's "making merit" and it goes like this; You approach one or several of the Monks on the side of the road and you place your offering, (usually rice, soup, cookies, and bottled water), in their bowl and then you kneel before them with your hands together in the "wai" position and the Monks then say a chant and prayer blessing your offering, your family and your coming year. As I mentioned yesterday, it is especially auspicious to do this on New Years Eve.

After we gave alms, we returned to the hotel for breakfast then headed to a Buddhist Temple/Buddhist University in town for "Monk Chat". One of the senior Monk's talked to us in a classroom environment for about an hour about Buddhism and the Thai culture. He gave a great lecture about how to find happiness in life through meditation and being a good person. Then we toured the temple with another Monk and he explained more about life at a Monastery and what it means to be a Buddhist Monk. As he showed us around he explained all of the details of a typical Buddhist temple and how to worship there. After the tour several of us gave a small donation to the temple in exchange for another blessing. This blessing included the tying of a string around your wrist. The string has been taken from a huge web of yarn that has been hung inside the temple from the statue of Buddha and is woven throughout the room. The Monks have chanted and prayed in the room with the yarn 4-5 times a day for several days so it holds a lot of great energy within.

The rest of the day is free time to rest, swim, get a Thai massage, or... hit the Internet cafe. Tonight we are having dinner at a beautiful restaurant by the river and we will ring in the new year there. We should have a good view of the local fireworks and later we will release large paper lanterns into the sky to release our intentions for 2009 into the sky.

This may the last post for a while as we leave for the elephant park first thing in the morning and the Internet is hit or miss there. We will be there for 8 days and I can hardly wait!!!

Full day in Chiang Mai

Today was a blast. We started with a trip to a beautiful temple in the mountains called Wat Doi Sutep. It is over 600 years old and is a very popular place to visit before the new year for Thai people. We received a blessing from a Buddhist Monk and walked around the amazing 3 story gold covered stupa 3 times to affirm our prayers for the coming year. This afternoon we went to a nice restaurant for lunch and then visited an umbrella factory where we had personal items like back packs, iPods, and t-shirts hand painted by the artists there. They paint the most beautiful murals of elephants, dragons and scenery. Tonight we are going to a traditional Thai restaurant for dinner but it won't be a late night because we are leaving the hotel at 5:45 in the morning to go give alms to some local Buddhist Monks. This is called giving merit and is a very auspicious thing to do on New Years Eve. In exchange for a little rice and other food items, the Monks chant and give you a blessing. We also release small finches from wicker baskets that you can purchase from street vendors and this also is a very auspicious thing to do on this day. It will be a fun day tomorrow.

In Chiang Mai

We made it safely to Chiang Mai. We have the rest of the day to recover from jet-lag and get settled into our hotel rooms. The weather here is amazing. Sunny and 85 degrees. We are staying at the Chiang Mai Plaza hotel and it is beautiful. There is a nice pool and the food is amazing. The fruit is delicious, (the sweetest most delicious pineapple I have ever tasted), and it is our first opportunity to taste some traditional Thai dishes.

Tonight we are going to visit the night market. What a blast! You can buy just about anything you can imagine and everything is bartered. We are also having dinner out at a very nice traditional Thai restaurant. They will have beautiful Thai dance and live Thai music.

What an incredible group of teens we have on this trip. Some of the most high functioning, intelligent, spiritual beings on the planet! They are really soaking in the amazing spiritual energy of the Buddhist culture here. It's an energy that you can feel as soon as you step off the plane. Every one here consistently embraces you with a warm smile. What a way to interact with another human. What if this was the way everyone greeted each other? It would be hard to judge, hard to get frustrated or impatient, hard to not see the beauty in everyone. This is how it is in Thailand. It is the Buddhist way.

We are on our way!

We successfully departed on the 26th and after a 14 hour flight from LAX to  Seoul, Korea we are now waiting to board a 6 hour flight to Bangkok, Thailand.  We are all very tired because it was difficult to sleep on the plane.  We have a 6 hour layover in Bangkok, (yep 6 hours....wow).  But here we will connect with the teens from Thailand and China.  This will be the first time we will all be together as a group so we will spend some time getting to know one another.  What an amazing group!  It's gonna be great.

I am embarking on the journey of a lifetime to Thailand on December 26th to participate in a program called The Power of One.  Here 30 teens, several adult mentors and I will spend 2 1/2 weeks volunteering at an elephant sanctuary, local schools and at a local Buddhist Temple that is currently under construction. The other participants will head home on the 14th of January but I will be staying to continue to volunteer and live at the Buddhist temple until the end of March. I will be teaching English at some local schools and being in service wherever I am needed.  I will be posting updates and photos of my trip on this blog whenever possible so please check back, pass it along, and feel free to leave a comment.

I feel so blessed to have this opportunity and I am open to all of the amazing experiences and lessons that are in store for me.

Namaste,

--Christian