The last few days have been full of activities! Yesterday I biked around my village with 4 other volunteers creating a big map of the community showing all of our houses and the important places such as iced coffee stands. I saw two huge monitor lizards, two snakes, lots of fish, and some turtles. Then I met my host brother for the first time and we went out to an outdoor market in Sing Buri and then to a restaurant for dinner. My host mom held my hand the whole time because she was so worried I would get lost. Although I think that would be pretty difficult since I stick out quite a bit around here. Today was Chinese New Year and my family is part Chinese so we had quite the day! I woke up and gave two whole chickens, lots and lots of fruit, and some snacks as offerings to Buddha. I must have lit hundreds of incense and stuck them into the chickens and fruit. we also tied flowers onto the front of the car for good luck. Then we went to a bunch of wats around sing and gave more offerings. I had to pour oil on things, push buckets of water down a hill, rub gold on Buddha, light more incense, and shake a lucky number out of a container. I really had no idea what was going on all day but apparently I should have excellent luck because I earned a ton of merit. And now picture time (if I can figure out how to do that)!
One example of the many rice fields I ride pass on my bike everyday on the way too and from class.
Standing in front of a giant Buddha with my host mom (who told me today I should be calling her sister and my grandmother mom... woops!) and Ginny, a fellow PCT. This is just one example of the many Buddha statues I saw today at various wats. I also had hundreds (no joke) of pictures taken of me throughout the day.
Offerings to Buddha. You can't see the incense very well put the pigs head has incense stuck in it. There were also fruits and chickens, and lots of strange things I didn't recognize and I hope I never learn what they really were.
Putting gold on Buddha. You are supposed to stick the gold on areas where you want help/luck. I chose the mouth to help me learn Thai, the eyes because my vision is horrible, the knees because my knees are horrible, the heart, and the ear to help me understand thai.
Thats all for now, more updates soon. Thanks for reading, have a fantastic day/night!
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