My Friday Events

Every Friday is like our Sunday.  We have no school and it's our relax day, a day where we usually plan nothing and just chill and watch some television shows our families have sent us.  Well, this week was different.  I teach a family class, which consists of the mother and the three children.  The father LOVES to treat us to dinner about every week, but this week he wanted to take us on a "tour" of Ubon.  It wasn't much of a tour around Ubon as much as it was a tour of his work and his house.  

First, we started off with some COW-MUNG-GUY, which is white rice with chicken, it was quite a tasty breakfast.  Then we headed 30km out of the city towards their house.  We were shown the father's work: a dam out in the middle of nowhere!! 

It was pretty remote.  But, I'm pretty sure he's well off because he kept emphasizing he's "NUMBER ONE" at his work... and he had a few cooking people and people that brought him important papers to sign throughout the whole day.   The main events of the day were eating and sitting.  There wasn't really much to do other than that, it was pretty hot.  Leah and I watched the children play in the water, it was pretty entertaining.  They have such cute animals!! It made me miss my pets back home.

During the middle of the day, the parents took us to a Buddhist temple.  It was both awkward and fascinating.  They both started worshipping the Buddha once we got there, and Leah and I just looked at one another.  What are we supposed to do here??

So, we waited patiently in the back, and after they were finished they pointed to the ground, which was their way of suggesting that they wanted us to do the same... we politely said no.  I'm glad it didn't take more than that for them to realize we weren't interested.  Then, we got a tour with an english speaking monk, he spoke pretty well.  It was interesting to hear things, but some of the things he was talking about made me wonder how so many people could worship something like this.  He was talking about the bones of Buddha being sacred, and they were in their shrines.  How could anyone worship someone's bones?  I really don't follow the logic there...

Although they think these things I respect their religion.  I'm sure my religion sounds crazy to them, too, and in the same situation I would hope that I would respect them just have they respected me in my beliefs.  

The day ended with a feast at a market outside of a university.  I was really glad to be done with my long day with them.  It was fun, but it's just difficult to converse with these people all day when you don't really understand them.  It's hard to comprehend what they're saying, and it really doesn't help when they repeat it over twenty times really loud - I'm thinking: how is this helping me understand you??  I'm sure if this was caught on tape it would very comical.  

Don't get me wrong, it was quite the experience, I just don't if I'd ever repeat that day again.