A Temple, The Jungle, and Monkeys!

I always have the most amazing experiences when I visit Phat Quang Temple in Ba Ria. I have made some very good friends there, and it was a pleasure seeing them.

After work yesterday morning, I drove to Ba Ria, a city about an hour and a half away. I had taught kids earlier so my voice was not up to its full potential. Also, there were many guests at the temple so we canceled the 3:00 class. The master arrived back from out of town with laptops in tow. Nhi was estatic that he bought her one. I was happy for her, too. She'll go back to America in a few months with a new laptop. Good for her.

The monks were all shaving their heads so they asked me if I'd like to have my head shaved. Of course I affirmitavely answered, and off we went. The second picture is of Tien and me showing off our bald heads.

We all ate dinner and had a lesson at 7pm. I taught them about adjectives when answering the famous question, "How are you?," how to greet people, and a paragraph about the temple with some information about location, number of monks and nuns cultivating there, etc. Below are some pics of me teaching. In the third picture, I was explaining the adjective, "full."

After class, I meditated for about twenty or so minutes. I can't quite get my chubby, short, stumps of legs into the correct position, but it's definitely something I'm determined to work toward.

When we all finished meditating, Tien came back to Ban's room and made himself some noodles. He left, shortly after, and the monkhouse went to sleep.

This morning after eating breakfast with everyone, I was invited to hike up the mountain into the jungle to see monkeys. How exciting! There were lots of monkeys, and they even ate out of my hand. They love chocolate, as do I. Below are some photos of our hiking expedition this morning.

The hike up the mountain:

Random power lines in the middle of the jungle:

We found monkeys!!

Hanging around:

Breaktime on the way back to the temple:

Hiking back, I found some bamboo. You don't see this every day in America, so I surely did take a "senior pic" in it.

Now, I'm home and have to teach a class tonight at KTV - back to reality! Tomorrow, I'm off so I'm going to take advantage of that by resting.