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.