Feeding the Monks

I have so many things to write about but not enough time at the moment. BUT, I did have to share an amazing experience. This morning I went with three others from my program to feed the monks. We had no idea what that meant. Tori found it on a tourist map that if you get to the Grand Palace a 6:00 you can feed the monks. We didn't go out last night so we thought, hey, why not, we will get up at 5:30 and get there by 6:00. We went by taxi and we got to the Grand Palace and there was no one there. We had the taxi driver drive us around the palace and back and we decided to go out. We all had envisioned a line of monks.

We happened to get out at the right moment when a monk was walking by and we asked about it. It ends up he has a temple in Tuscon, AZ and he was back taking care of his mothe and he spoke very good English. He said we could follow him. So we did. We walked around behind him and one other monk and watched as people came out to give them food. They come forward, take there shoes off, touch the food to their forehead and make a wish, and then offer the food, do a deep wai (a Thai greeting of respect) or get on their knees. Then the monks do a prayer for you. See the video below on how it is done. (I did it, I used the video everyone, thanks bunches!)

Then the monk took us back to his temple and shared the food with us for breakfast, showed us around the entire temple and took us to the meditation class we wanted to visit. It was quite an amazing experience. Here are a few more photos walking with the monks. My friends in the photos are Tori, Darren and Tazeen.

Chinatown

A quick trip to Chinatown last week, always fun stuff there. Here are a few pictures of the delicacies including lots of dried fish and fruits, the yummy (jk) durien being hucked right there for consumption, bugs, and some deep fried instestines of some sort.

Durian

Dried fish and fruit
One of many markets in Chinatown

Bugs anyone?

Deep friend intestines

YUM!

Trip to a football match

Just a quick note about the football game last week (that means soccer). It ends up the first Saturday I was here was the big game of the year, equivalent to the Michigan/Ohio State Game. It was crazy. We heard we needed to be there by 2:30 to get tickets when the gates open. There was an hour and a half processional coming into the stadium, I think it was each department and class having different floats. Then there were the card cheer sections. At each end of the stadium there were the "card crowd" (I have no idea what you call them). It is when they have a different color card and make a pattern, sometimes they do it in the States. But they had hundreds of different ones; the picture above is of the King of Thailand. Instead of chanting nasty things, they would just have them written in the cards when they didn't like a play. Each school had the the card sections.

Also there were bands playing and dancers the entire game and the cheerleaders changed clothes regularly into all these incredible fashions (none US cheerleaderish at all); see picture above. You could buy "shade" tickets or "sun" tickets. The shade tickets cost twice as much but all the available seats (the empty seats in the picture) were in the sun. The Chula crowd was all in pink. Oh, there was also a soccer game too. Ended in a tie at the exciting score of 0 to 0.

Fish for dinner anyone?

Had a wonderful dinner the other night with one of our classmates who is Thai. He took us for some great street food and ordered up a feast. It was awesome.

Class has started and it is really interesting. It is lectures broken up by a lot of different group exercises, games and role playing. There is a lot of talk and debate with the teachers, it is not a top down style of teaching at all. I had a great conversation with one of the professors yesterday; I had been feeling like I didn't really fit in because I wasn't working on any international peace issues. But as I was talking to one of the professors about what I do and what I plan to do with what I learn in the program she was very excited about it. If you all don't know, I really believe planners should be trained in conflict resolution because we deal with community conflict all the time. What often ends up happening is we build consensus instead of solving conflict. So basically I see consensus building as a short term solution where usually everyone compromises and no one is truly happy with the outcome AND it doesn't solve the the root of the problem. That problem just continues to cause problems in the future.

So there I was explaining this to this amazing woman from the Philippines who is working on major conflict issues in Mindanao and she got it. She got it exactly and she called me a pioneer in my field and that I needed to publish something about it! So I thought, hey, maybe I do fit in in my own way!

Bangkok is a HUGE city, over 12 million they think but with homelessness and commuters not being accounted for I guess an unofficial number during the week is over 16 million. It is much more cosmopolitan than it was when I was here 18 years ago. (Can't believe it was 18 years ago!) There was not sky train or metro then and there weren't a million mega shopping malls either. BTW, of all strange things the campus is right near these crazy, famous shopping malls which I have to go to often. It is where we go grocery shopping,get coffee, eat dinner often, etc. etc. The malls are all interconnected with sky ways and they are busy all the time. One of the malls is set up with little vendor areas and one whole floor has cell phones, another electronics, another of fabric, etc., etc.

I have found a great 4.5 mile running route from the dorm to Lumphini Park, a great urban oasis. Cultural note: They have public outdoor exercise classes such as aerobics, Ta chi, yoga in the park and just in parking lots around campus.

First Day

Our orientation is now over for the Peace program. The group is 22 people, 12 men and 10 women from all over the world. We each had to give an 8 minutes (not long!) presentation on a conflict we are working on. We will then apply the knowledge we learn each section of the program to that conflict (i.e analysis, strategies and transformation).

Folks are working on interesting issues from Taliban in Pakistan, child trafficking in SE Asia, Refuges in Bangladesh, ethnic conflicts in NE India, tobacco smuggling in Poland, First Nation land issues in Canada, poverty in Guatemala and political issues in various places in Africa. So my little land use issues in rural northern Michigan seem irrelevant but I guess conflict starts somewhere!

The photo is of our class and the younger Thais are students at the university who gave us a tour and will be giving us Thai language classes if we choose.

Cultural notes: The university color is pink; this is because the King Chulalongkorn was born on Tuesday and the color of Tuesday is pink. I guess a long time ago Thai's would wear the color of the day (this is no longer practiced). Also, Thai university students all wear uniforms.

I made it!

I forgot how brutal that trip is. 30 hours of total travel time between my house and my room. Plus 12 hours time difference (ahead). So arrived about 2 a.m. this morning. My room is bigger than a dorm room but smaller than a hotel room. But it is barren like a dorm room. I can't really be bothered to make it that homey for three months either. . .

After sleeping for a bit I went for a walk checking out the campus and eating a bowl of noodle soup. I am so happy that you can eat noodles here for breakfast lunch or dinner! I then met a few of my fellow class mates and did some shopping for a few needed items.

I hope to get a full nights sleep tonight and then maybe be a tourist tomorrow before the orientation starts.

A quick note: I forgot what it feels like to be illiterate. . . it is so strange not being able to read! I can't even imagine going through life that way.

Applying

I was at a party the other night and a friend asked me when I started the process to apply for the fellowship on peace and conflict studies. I told him last January. He then asked, isn't that when you were diagnosed with Lupus? I laughed, I said "you picked right up on that". This peace program (more info on the program under the post "What is a Peace Trip") meant more to me then just going to Bangkok. The application process really gave me focus last winter when I was going through some difficult realizations about my life and health (see earlier posts about 2009 and Lupus)

I had planned to apply for this program long before I got sick and when I did get sick, I focused on it even more. It gave me an inner peace to continue my life the way I saw fit regardless of having an incurable disease. It gave me something to look forward to and the application process itself gave me a peaceful focus. In some ways it was my own type of meditation and I looked inward to my future and my life dreams and goals.

So yes, I did start this application process last January and found out I was accepted just two months ago. I am often asked why the process took so long; it is because the program is very competitive on a WORLD basis. My process started with contact to the local Rotary club and then the Rotary District. Then my challenge was to write a three page narrative explaining not only why my profession deals with conflict but also I had to explain what my profession is! Most people do not know what Planners do. Writing the narrative really helped me determine within myself why I wanted to study Peace and Conflict Resolution. Then there was a Club interview and a District interview and then the application went to Rotary Foundation. They pick the 25 people who will participate.

The entire process really gave me some much needed internal peace. Even if I had not received the fellowship, I would have been thankful for the opportunity to have applied as it helped me focus on the future. So for me, it is not just an experience to study peace, but to also find my own inner peace.

What is a “Peace Trip”?

I am literally going to Bangkok, Thailand to earn a professional development certificate in Peace and Conflict Resolution. In early November (after starting the application process last February) I found out I was going to be a Rotary Peace Fellow studying with 23 other people from around the world at the Rotary Center for International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. It is quite an amazing opportunity. Of the 23 people I will be studying with, seven are US citizens and folks from all over the world including places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ukraine, Nigeria, Argentina, Poland, Australia, Canada and The Netherlands.

To learn more about the program go to www.rotary-chulu.org or to learn more about rotary go to www.rotary.org.

I will be living in student housing near the campus and the program is very academic, in class every day (taught in English). Part of the program includes a week long field study in Northern Thailand and also a week long field study in Nepal. The program is three months long starting in mid January and going until early April.

Harry (my husband) plans to come over in early April and we are going to travel for a month; not sure where yet. I’ll let you know when I know!

Looking ahead to 2010

Finally its 2010. A big relief to get 2009 over with. Now it is a time to look ahead. I leave to Bangkok in 9 days. I now have my plane ticket and my visa, most of my medicine and have partially packed. Since this is a Rotary program, I will have a host family there so I also have a bunch of gifts for folks, Rotary flags and pins from the club and district here in Michigan. I hope it all fits! I also have paperwork like you wouldn't believe. We have already received a reading assignment which I plan to do on the plane or my first week there. I also have to prepare a presentation on a conflict. I have decided to do it on Land Use issues in Petoskey. It will be more general since most of the issues create similar conflicts. So I also have been creating maps and data to bring with me, in between the rest of my work. I look forward to having only the program to focus on, it will be good for me.

So as you might have guessed, I have been too busy to really think to much about what I am getting into, which may be a good thing!